DON’T MISS:
- Today’s Free Book Alert Sponsor: THE YEAR WE FINALLY SOLVED EVERYTHING Rudolf Kerkhoven
- eBook of the Day: UNCIVIL LIBERTIES Gordon Ryan
By Steve Windwalker
Have you heard that most books in the Kindle Store are priced at $9.99?
If so, it might seem like a lot to pay for a digital book, when neither the publisher nor the author incur any expense for printing, paper, shipping, or warehousing. Ebooks at $10 a pop can add plenty to your monthly credit card bill in a hurry.
Well, here’s some good news.
Over 39% of the books in the Kindle Store are priced at $4.99 or less, and among those there are — as of December 2010 — over 16,700 free books.
Another 46% are priced between $5 and $10, and of those that are priced above $10, the vast majority are technical books whose paper editions are far more expensive. That’s right: 85% of the books in the Kindle Store are under 10 bucks.
Each morning at Kindle Nation we publish a Free Book Alert focusing on the latest contemporary or promotional titles to be added to our Free Book listings, and currently that list has grown to over 185 titles. It’s one of the most popular things we do on the Kindle Nation blog, and it’s a good feeling to know that we are helping to keep all of our Kindles, including our own, filled to the gills with good reading. (Watch for a future post that will help you locate your Kindle’s gills).
But the other 16,500 free Kindle books are nothing to sneeze at either. While it is true that they are public domain titles, many of these are classics that make great leisure or enrichment reading. And if you happen to be an English, philosophy, or humanities major or graduate student, those classics could save you a bundle when it’s time to buy textbooks. Not to put too fine a point on this, but these are not junk titles — just type the name of one of your favorite classic authors into your search and you will likely be pleased with the return, especially when see the prices.
Would you like an example?
Well, here’s a pretty good one, as of the first week of December.
Yesterday over 10 million America’s watched Oprah Winfrey hold up a copy of her latest Oprah’s Book Club pick, a two-novel volume containing Charles Dickens’ classics Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities. It was a bit of an interesting pick, since Oprah admitted on the air that she had never read anything by Dickens. But she held up a nice thick paperback that she said Penguin had published for her in just a week, with a suggested retail price of $20, discounted to $11 by Amazon. (Yes, she also held up a Kindle, in recognition of the fact that Amazon had provided her with a free Kindle for every member of her studio audience.)
And yes, it is true that Penguin has also provided a Kindle edition of the two-novel Oprah’s Book Club pick selection for the fairly reasonable price of $7.99.
But the really good news for you and me and all of the hundreds of new Kindle owners in Oprah’s audience is that — with our Kindles — those Dickens novels are absolutely free! We can click here for Great Expectations and click here for A Tale of Two Cities, and without spending a ha’penny we can start reading either or both books within seconds on any Kindle or Kindle app!
Now ain’t that just the dickens? And maybe that’s why the studio audience, after applauding politely for the Michael Jackson segment and the Jonathan Franzen rapprochement and the Dickens picks, saved its most intense applause of Oprah’s hour for the announcement that they had all received brand new free Kindles!
