The main reason e-book readers choose their digital versions over paper copies is because they are cheaper, and sometimes even free.
E-books haven’t always been free. In fact, as of just 10 years ago, e-books were more expensive than their paper counterparts. But lately Amazon has been offering e-books for free or at a discounted rate, some say as loss leaders in order to help push early adoption of their Kindle e-book reader platform. The proof is in the list of top 100 downloads of which 64 are listed for $0.00.
Amazon is able to distribute public domain works like “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” and “Pride and Prejudice” for free, but e-books like Noel Hynd’s “Not Your Mother’s Slow Cooker: Recipes for Entertaining” (#9) has to cost Amazon something. In the same way a grocery store offers a steal-of-a-deal on the front page of their ads, Amazon is luring in customers with these free e-books.
Would customers have purchased these free e-books if Amazon had not of offered them? Are people downloading them simply because they are free? Most are probably downloaded by readers in the first few weeks that they own a Kindle, when they’re looking to download something simply for the sake of downloading something and Amazon is in a way rewarding them for their recent purchase.
Kindle’s charts may also be skewed by hardcore early adopters’ reading habits, but these patterns may change now that more casual users are picking up the Kindle for the first time. And we know consumer buying habits are changing because more customers purchased Kindle titles than physical books on Christmas Day this year for the first time ever.
With Sony’s e-book Reader and Barnes and Noble’s nook e-book reader, the demand for e-books is only going to go up. If Amazon opens it’s e-book sales for distribution on these other devices, it can only be a win-win for hardware and book sales alike all around. Both the nook and the Kindle are solid platforms. Learn more about each of them here.