Three Key Features To Consider When Buying An eBook Reader

1. 
   Mike Brown said on March 22nd, 2010 at 10:22 am

   “the Australian Kindle has it all over the BeBook being significantly cheaper than the comparable BeBook reader”

   You’re talking about up front costs only, and that cheap prices comes with a big set of hand-cuffs. Once you’ve got your Kindle, you can only really get ebooks from Amazon and you have to pay every time.

   Because of its more open format support, the Bebook gives you access to a whole range of free books from the likes of Project Gutenberg. This is all perfectly legal; the books are out of copyright so you don’t have to pay anybody. The complete works of Shakespare or Dickens or Conan Doyle are all there. In Australia, the complete works of George Orwell fall into this category too.

   Amazon actually has the nerve to charge you for these out of copyright classics. To be fair, they’re priced quite cheaply – 3 to 6 USD for the older ones – but that’s still more than free! And for the Orwell stuff, some of which is sstill in copyright in the U.S., you’re up to 10 USD a go.

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2. 
   admin said on March 22nd, 2010 at 1:54 pm

   Sure, I’m talking about upfront costs. The Kindle IS very much cheaper than the BeBook and it is also a better overall package. The majority of people who are buying Kindles are doing them for 2 reasons

   1. The ease of use – buying a book from Amazon takes all of around a minute and you are reading it 2 minutes later. When you compare this to the cumbersome store experience available on the BeBook (none) and the fact you need to use your computer each time, go online to find the book you want to purchase and then transfer it to the BeBook no wonder people are purchasing Kindles in droves and BeBooks in limited quantities.

   The case of the iPod is instructive – once iTunes was introduced iPod sales rocketed – not only was it a cool device but the built in ability to buy music online and its total integration was irresistible to consumers. Amazon with the Kindle have done the same for book buying. Made a attractive device at a price point not out of reach of the more voracious reader and built in a seamless buying experience.

   2. Most people buying a Kindle are doing so because they read a lot of paperbacks. A lot of people read a paperback and then either discard it, lend it to a friend or donate it off to a library or book share club.

   If you are like me – I read about 30-40 paperbacks a year your shelves start stacking up with hundreds of paperbacks after a few years. I usually donate mine to the Salvos or the Smith Family stores. But with a Kindle, my ongoing costs of purchasing paperbacks have been cut in half or more. The device will pay itself back within a year

   On the point of charging for classics – well yes they do but mostly to cover the costs of the wireless transfers and they are pretty cheap. Kindle user can also download books free from Project Gutenburg and read them on the Kindle as it supports unprotected MOBI, PRC text and pdf formats natively.

   All in all the Kindle still is the better eReader and will stay that way until the iPad comes along (but we’ll have to wait for the Australian iBook Store)

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