Walletpop reports "Battle of e-readers shows Kindle books much cheaper than Nook, Sony."For Kindle Edition subscribers, I'm inserting Walletpop's chart into this news alert to make it easier, but website visitors and RSS feed readers can easily use the link to walletpop to read the full story.
ALSO, Kindle Edition subscribers may use this article and chart as a very good example of what you can do on the Kindle if choosing to browse mobile-unit-optimized websites.
This Walletpop article is a good way to get familiar with the Kindle's built-in and free web browser. If you're at home or in an office, you can even plug in the adapter if wanting to play with the web-browser features without draining the battery.
To get the Kindle-friendly version of the walletpop article with your Kindle, click on the following link to the same article optimized for mobile units, and you'll see that when away from home you can use the Kindle pretty nicely for lookups if you know the links to mobile-device versions of various sites.
For the sports-interested, there's a mobile version for ESPN also. As usual, when on a computer, see my mobile-web article for a downloadable Kindle file of mobile-device optimized sites linked. That article also includes a link to my blog entry on how to use the Kindle's web-browser for faster and more readable results.
Back to the Walletpop story
For the article, Tom Barlow chose the New York Times selection of the 10 best books of 2009 -- five fiction, five non-fiction and avoided current bestsellers because they're often subject to price wars and loss-leader pricing.
He found the results startling, and I agree. While I did not think that Amazon had raised prices already in any finalized greement with major publishers, he found that prices had risen on Amazon above the $9.99 price point for what were bestsellers in 2009.
However, I've noted that when a book is a bit older and no longer on the NYT bestseller list, Amazon has often raised the price, which helps them recoup some of the money lost in selling bestsellers at $9.99 when they traditionally pay the publishers about $12.50-$15.00 (50% or so of the LIST price SET by the publishers).
| Book | Amazon for Kindle | Barnes & Noble for Nook | Reader Store for Sony |
| Chronic City by Jonathan Letham | $15.37 | $20.76 | $9.99 |
| Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It by Maile Meloy | $14.27 | $18.53 | $18.16 |
| A Gate At The Stairs by Lorrie Moore | $14.27 | $19.27 | $9.99 |
| Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls | $9.99 | $9.99 | $9.99 |
| A Short History Of Women by Kate Walbert | $9.99 | $17.82 | $9.99 |
| The Age Of Wonder by Richard Holmes | $23.76 | $29.71 | $40.00 |
| The Good Soldiers by David Finkel | $9.99 | $18.57 | $9.99 |
| Lit: A Memoir by Mary Karr | $9.99 | $22.27 | $9.99 |
| Lords Of Finance by Liaquat Ahamed | $9.99 | $9.99 | $9.99 |
| Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life by Carol Sklenicka | $19.25 | $26.00 | $24.50 |
| Total | $136.87 | $192.91 | $152.59 |
As you can see, many books remained at the $9.99 price, nevertheless, and Barlow notes
' the shocking difference in price between Amazon, the Reader Store and Barnes & Noble. In just this small sample, books for the Sony Reader were 11.5% more expensive, while the ones for the Nook cost 41% more. 'He asked Mary Ellen Keating, senior vice president of corporate communications and public affairs for Barnes & Noble, about this price disparity. To be fair to the writer and the paper, please go to the story to learn how she explained the price differences. It's sort of a marvel.
Barlow sums it up this way:
' ...those of us who read books on another platform, Blackberry in my case, have a choice between versions of the Nook and Kindle readers. Guess which one I'll be using. '
Photo credit: Librarian by Day
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