<p>So I just got a sample of a book - Far From the Tree - and saw that the Kindle price is $19.99! Having sticker shock. I thought the $12.99 I’ve paid for some books was outrageous but this takes the cake. Will the lawsuit against Apple have any effect on Kindle book pricing?</p>
<p>Yowza. That is a bit high for my budget. I’d run to my local library after seeing that price!
If enough people do not buy the book at that price, then the pricing will come down in time.</p>
<p>Whoa! That book is on my list of books to be read, and I had no idea it was so pricey. on the flip side, the paperback is over $16, and since it is almost 1000 pages – I’d probably spend the extra money to have it on my Kindle. But that’s one of the higher priced books I’ve seen. I buy a LOT of Kindle books and most can be had for a much more reasonable amount.</p>
<p>I have been buying a lot of Kindle books this summer. I got a Kindle Paperwhite as a birthday present, and it really made me want to read.</p>
<p>Anyways, I have found most books to be under $10, and a few in the a little above $10 range. At least in my experience, I think books that are in the $19.99 range are outliers. Even so, the costs do add up, which is why I started using the library to get Kindle books!</p>
<p>The whole idea of charging so much for digital books is an absurd racket. When Amazon first began promoting the Kindle they “promised” that their top price would be $9.99 but then some major publishing houses tried to withhold books unless the costs were upped so the consumer lost. A lot of us boycott those high priced books, but it hasn’t seemed to have much effect.
There are several blogs, websites and Facebook pages which feature free or low-priced books each day and as acollegestudent mentioned, some libraries “loan” ebooks too!</p>
<p>Yeah the pricing for ebooks is pretty outrageous in a lot of cases, given that there is essentially zero overhead cost - no need to pay for ink, paper, other printing costs, shipping the physical book to the store or customer, etc. And yet they still charge almost the same price, for no other reason than because they can. Hopefully something will happen to bring those prices down. My guess is that authors will eventually move to self-publishing (or specialized e-publishers) and avoiding the middle man.</p>
<p>I was an early adopter of the kindle. I got it for Christmas after seeing it on Oprah’s giveaway show. Back then I think my husband spent 4 or 500 for it. So the deal was the book prices were super low. Then as the prices of the devices went down, prices of the books went up.</p>
<p>What worries me is real bookstores are being put under a tremendous strain now, and I get it’s survival of the fittest. Once there are no realistic options to purchase books, amazon will be able to charge way higher prices. I know there are people who are book “purists”, who in no way would want to read an e-book. But those must be the minority. Most “readers” I know - people who actually read more than a book a year, all do the kindle.</p>
<p>Anytime I’m at the beach I never see anyone reading a “real” book. I wonder what authors make of all of this.</p>
<p>So I recently won a Kindle Fire HD at a business event for DH. It worked out for me because I had been wanting to read Washington Square by Henry James since seeing The Heiress last year. I am sure I have a copy in my house but couldn’t find. I had taken out of the library but had to return after I never had a chance to read it after I had even renewed it. I found it quite easy to read on the Kindle and it was free. Since then I have ordered one book, “The Attack” at $11.99 as there were four copies in my county in the public library system and by the time I would get it on reserve it would take some time. There is a movie now which I recommend highly and so I wanted to read the book
So far I have not brought my Kindle to the beach as I don’t want to drop in the sand and I still working my way through all the books that I bought when Borders went out of business. What I will do is figure out from my public library how to borrow books on Overdrive from them but I don’t think for me that I would want to use my Kindle exclusively. It is a handy device however for checking email away from home so happy that I have it, even happier that I won it and didn’t buy it. I have a business trip this week so I will be taking with me.</p>
<p>We have regular Kindles and a Kindle Fire. The Fire is not good for the beach anyway because it’s a tablet that is hard to see in sunlight. If they could add an e-ink display to the Fire or my Ipad Mini, that would be the perfect device! Oh, and a small detachable phone! Oh, and a camera!</p>
<p>For all you Kindle fans, did you know there is a site called Book Bub that scours the book sale websites for specials and then sends you a daily email? Every so often the book sites put Kindle books on special - either free or a dollar or two. You can customize your email to your type of reader and the type of books you like. I now have a backlog on my Kindle. My DH though, signed up and later dropped it because he claims they never sent books he liked.</p>
<p>I download books from the public library right onto my kindle, for free. If the book isn’t available right away, I put it on hold and get an email when it’s available. I love being able to get books when I’m out of town. I was even able to get kindle versions of travel guides so I had the “books” with me all the time. I have a kindle device <em>and</em> the kindle app on both my iphone and laptop.</p>
<p>I believe the reason that Kindle (and Nook) prices went up is because of a deal between the Big 5 publishers to get rid of Amazon’s 9.99 price point. This is why you see “this price has been set by the publisher” on Kindle book pages on Amazon. The suits that followed are ever evolving. But I do not blame this one on Amazon.</p>
<p>Hmmm… any hints for giving gift cards for Kindle? With such pricing variation, it would be hard to pick an amount. Actually, I still have not even figured out how to do it. </p>
<p>I assume there could be “partial credit” for remaining amount… true?</p>
<p>If you give an Amazon gift card, the recipient puts it on his Amazon account. The Kindle purchases will deduct first from a gift card, leaving the balance for the next puchase. Kindle needs a cc on the account, but will take from the gift card first. Is that what you mean? I buy myself a gc and put it on my Amazon account so that I don’t have a bunch of small purchases on my cc that I have to track. I buy myself a card for $100 and then keep track of how long that lasts me. I have an Amazon cc so I get a lot of my gc “free” (I’m totally enabled by Amazon, obviously…).</p>
<p>jaylynn - Thanks! That helps a lot.</p>
<p>I have a Nook and I subscribe to a B&N service that sends a book-of-the-day, usually 1.99 or 2.99 but always under $5. A lot of crap (romance novels, potboiler mystery series) but sometimes it’s a really good deal. And the next day it goes back to the regular price.</p>
<p>Also there is a section of the B&N website with “books under $5.”</p>
<p>I also download library books. Why pay for books that you are only going to read once? Library books are extremely easy to download onto kindles!</p>
<p>[OverDrive</a> - Global distributor of digital eBooks, audiobooks, music & video for library, school & retail](<a href=“OverDrive: ebooks, audiobooks, and more for libraries and schools”>OverDrive: ebooks, audiobooks, and more for libraries and schools)</p>
<p>
Agreed! And if you want to read it more than once, you can always borrow it from the library again.</p>
<p>Many people don’t realize this but you can share kindle books between friends and family, for 14 days.</p>
<p>[Amazon.com</a> Help: Lend or Borrow Kindle Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200549320]Amazon.com”>http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200549320)</p>
<p>You can also have up to six devices on a Kindle account, which have to share a cc. We have more than that; I’m not sure why Amazon lets us, but they do (three Kindles, an iPad, three iPhones). So most books I buy are shared between my family. I buy books because I reread fairly often and I hate waiting for the library ebook copy. But I still read a lot of “real” books from the library if I know I don’t want a copy of my own.</p>