2010-06-21

Why I sold my Kindle (updated)

I was given a Amazon Kindle as a birthday present last December.  I recently sold it on eBay.

When I first receive the Kindle, I was very excited about it.  I thought this would definitely be the wave of the future, and a great device to use for years to come.  Over the holidays, I took it with me on vacation and read books for about 30 hours on it.  I was able to download free, older books online as well as a few free deals Amazon had going on.

The Kindle's screen is truly nice to read on.  The only downside is that there is quite a lag in the refresh rate.  I didn't get rid of the Kindle due to the technology itself, the main reason I dumped it was due to simple economics.

Price of new Kindle: $259
Cost of leather cover: $35
Sold both for: ~$190 net of shipping and eBay fees
Total loss: ~$104 (but keep in mind it was a gift)

So, basically I used a Kindle for about 2 months, let it sit for 4 months, and sold it.  I consider myself lucky, since it would have cost me much more to keep it.

I read approximately 2-3 books per month.  The average cost of a new book is $18 or so, on a Kindle it is $10.  So some would say that I would save between 16-24 a month by using the Kindle.

Not true.

First of all, a Kindle book is worthless.  You can't sell it, you can't trade it, you can loan it to a friend.  It is there to be read once and that's it.  That bestseller you buy for $18 can be sold for something later on.  And you can always buy a used book on half.com for a lot less.

And need I talk about my new best friend?  The library.

Keeping the Kindle would have cost me $20-30 a month in recurring book fees to Amazon.  It would make me stress over each purchase, wondering if its worth the money, since I wouldn't be able to do anything with the book once I was done.

What Amazon needs to do is lower the price of books, or at least remove the DRM, like Apple has with iTunes.

By the way, I took my profit and bought something I'll at least use: a Garmin Forerunner 305 brand new for $135.

Update: About an hour after posting this Amazon dropped the price of the Kindle to $189.  Looks like my timing was dead on.