I agree. And the cost of ebooks is often very reasonable, Amazon are selling lots (more than one can read in a lifetime) of superb stuff in the $1-$4 range. (Makes things really difficult for the modern authors though).

Also a paper book you'd carry every day with you for a year will look in much worse state than a Kindle.

Reading e-books is an affordable past time...

To be pedantic, Amazon sells you a license to read the book but you don’t actually own the book like you would a real book. They can remove the book anytime and there is nothing you can do about it. They’ve already done it in the past, the book just vanished.

Yep. I don't mind paying authors and published for ebooks, but I draw the line at Amazon controlling my library. It seems like one solution might be to buy the ebook via whatever platform the author says is best for them, and then acquire a copy you control via other means.

If you are really worried about this, you can pirate the book from the usual sites and side load it onto your kindle.

You can strip DRM in one click using Calibre. That way you can support the author and also own the book forever.

The terms of service in UK seem better in this regard than USA.

Which/why did they remove the book?

Here: https://gizmodo.com/amazon-secretly-removes-1984-from-the-ki...

The irony that it was Orwell’s 1984 that was secretly removed from purchasers’ kindles seem to have been totally lost on Amazon.

I didn't know about that, would have been right that Amazon pays damages to the copyright holder. But they did at least refund the price paid, so the readers were no worse off than at start.

Generally not a big fan of Amazon-world, but if you don't mind reading older books kindle is good value I think. My 30pence copy of Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia" was very good value, and has not yet mysteriously disappeared from my Kindles!

The famous example is the removal of George Orwell's 1984. Note that Bezos called it all kinds of things, but did not revert the change according to the article [0]

[0] https://www.npr.org/2009/07/24/106989048/amazons-1984-deleti...

Some books prices are ok.

Infuriates me when the paperback is $4-5 cheaper than the ebook, henchman’s exactly uncommon.

I replaced my Paperwhite in December 2024 for a new Paperwhite. I bought it in November 2014.

It's the best gadget I've ever bought.

Does the screen redraw faster on page turns? It’s the one thing that keeps me from using my old paperwhite very often. I would be willing to trade off considerable battery life for pages to turn instantly, which my iPad can do but I want e-ink.

How old is your paperwhite? I upgraded mine around the same time of the post you're replying to with roughly the same length inbetween. The difference in page turn between the two devices is night and day. The new ones are insanely fast. With that being said, it is noticeable and not nearly as quick as an iPad. Check out some demoes though to see if it is tolerable for you.

7th gen from 2016. Noticeable is ok but it was too noticeable.

Compared to the earlier generations of Kindles, yes, they are considerably faster, but you'll likely never get "instant" page turns on an e-ink display. For what it's worth, I've never found the page turning to interrupt my flow - except when I accidentally drop it on my face and it turns pages! :D

Some e-ink can be refreshed ~10fps I think. And old kindles had the ability to increase turn speed but it could leave artifacts on the screen, iirc

Yeah, that's the main reason why I replaced it. It started taking ages to turn pages. Plus the battery life was a bit degraded but that wasn't so bad tbh.

The new one is a lot faster.

I have a kindle 4 from 2011, still runs like a champ and holds multiple weeks of charge. I have had zero issues. I wish all gadgets were like this.

Sadly I seem to have kindles which suffer from increasing numbers of stuck pixels after 3-5 years.

I think I'm on my third now, and while I kinda begrudge buying new ones the paper-white I've got now, with backlight, is such a pleasure to use I can almost forgive it.

My son uses a Kindle DX. I had to replace the battery, it doesn't have WiFi, and they shut down the 3G network access years ago. It's perfect in that way. No distractions and no network access.

I removed the 3G modem when I replaced the battery to prevent it from being turned on and draining the battery as it constantly tries to connect. The microusb port is not in great condition and only works with the cable at certain angles. On the bright side, that's only an issue every few weeks when it gets charged and a new load of books.

My wife has the newest basic Kindle because she prizes light weight over any other aspect.

> when it gets charged and a new load of books.

Zeugma in the wild.

Totally agree. I was given a Kindle Paperwhite as a gift (great gift idea, by the way) and eventually bought a Kobo for some more flexibility. Both were about $120 retail. It brought so much reading into my life - I'm a full ebook convert at this point. Few pieces of tech could give me so much value.

What do you use the extra flexibility for? I have a Kobo because I don't give money to Amazon. I wouldn't know what to do with it other than buy books from kobo.com and read them.

I purchase a lot of independent ebooks that come as epub files. You can send them through amazons kindle service or convert them with Calibre, but I love being able to just drag and drop any file I want onto it. I've purchased books on the train and dragged and dropped them onto the Kobo mid ride.

It's mostly because I like owning a more portable file.

Same here. €125 6 inch Kobo. Black and white screen with backlight and good resolution. USB-C. With WiFi off, battery lasts a month. Holds 1000's of books. Don't see why I'd need a new ereader for at least a decade to come.

I think you're making the author's point. They cost the same 10+ years ago. They should be cheaper. And $100 is not chump change - but depends on where you live. Three day's salary for me (grad student)

I think we've passed the era of most new electronic devices constantly coming down in price due to time passing. They were all already mass produced commodities with competition at each step of the chain 10 years ago.

On whether $100 is incredibly cheap/"chump change": It really is incredibly cheap, especially for a new electronic device you can use for thousands of hours over 9 years. That's not the same as a claim it's an easy expense for every person, if we become bound by that definition of cheap then there is no such price which everyone can easily afford and we lose the distinction. On that note, I often wonder if it's cheaper for libraries to just rent out ereaders than manage more physical book storage and exchange. I know my local library already does rentals but I'm not sure of the economics.

Companies gotta show increasing profit.

Once the market is saturated, you can't rely on selling more devices, even at lower prices. Companies have to turn to extracting more money from existing customers, like subscriptions and services.

That's not why. It's because Moore's Law died. Same reason we need 10x compute for each 2x performance increase from LLMs.

Where's GPT5 anyway? Isn't that supposed to be out by now? Sorry, that's not super relevant..

eBooks are expensive for libraries. Publishers are asshats and charge considerably more for eBook licences that expire after X uses or Y time, whichever comes first.

I bought a Kobo Glo HD for €129 in 2016. This would be €168 today.

A comparable entry-level model (Kobo Clara BW) today is €149 - 12% cheaper. It's also now waterproof and does bluetooth audio.

It's a niche product that doesn't really benefit much from economies of scale (think eInk displays of that size). I don't think anyone is getting ripped off here.

For many of us in the USA $100 is the price of a meal for 2, no alcohol, at a good but not expensive "fine dining" type restaurant. The e-reader seems like a total steal in that context. (which of course doesn't mean that the pricing of things isn't psychotic)

Can you give an example of a restaurant you have in mind? I thought I lived in a HCOL area, but your number seems off by nearly a factor of 2 to me. Plus, considering how infrequently many people eat out at all, I'm not so convinced that this specific argument is a good one.

"For many of us" != "for everyone". This is also an order of magnitude argument and I'd accept as perfectly valid within factors of 2.

Its ~50 to eat at any sit down restaurant for two adults in Central Louisiana; compare to 20 years ago where I was feeding a family of four for $40 in southern california.

The inflation is staggering.

Anyone else remember the $6 Burger from Carl's? It didn't cost $6 at first, it cost like $3, and was aimed at "expensive restaurant burgers" They discontinued the Burger when tbe Burger itself cost $6 a LA carte.

A $6 burger now is a steal

I'm thinking sit down waited upon dinner for two, "second/third tier cities" in Northeast USA mostly - In 2025 you might see $30/head "restaurant week prix fixe" but those places are usually closer to $50/head if there's anything additional to an entree

And yes, we have kind of a restaurant death spiral because it is expensive to eat out.

> I think you're making the author's point. They cost the same 10+ years ago. They should be cheaper.

What? They are cheaper. Costing the same now that they did 10 years ago is a price drop of 25%.

This is completely ignoring inflation

Inflation is calculated on a basket of consumer goods including electronic items. So, you can't just explain away prices by hand-waving "because inflation" when they define inflation themselves.

The price has stayed the same, the devices haven't. The screen on the reader you buy today is a mile better than the one 10 years ago.

This progress will likely slow, patents will expire and then maybe prices will fall. But $100 for a device that will last you years seems okay.

Hum... I haven't checked on the last 3 or so years. But last time I was out to buy one, I couldn't find anything with a screen as good as the one I brought 5 years earlier. And most had severe software constraints.

And I've never seen anything on the market that even competes with my first reader that I brought around 2010.

Those things seem to be getting constantly more expensive, with the "cheapest price" being maintained by launching smaller models. All while constantly getting lower contrasts and less oriented towards offline usage.

What 2010 reader did you have? The $140 6" Kobo Clara BW for example is far far better than original $150 6" Kobo of 2010. Screen is much sharper and higher contrast, supports touch, it's way faster, has WiFi, front light, software does more, 16 times the storage. Only thing it lost is SD card support and the shitty dpad and I guess Blackberry integration.

Kindle is a similar story, although some value the physical keyboard and 3G.

And what smaller models? Most eReaders have been 6" since the days of the Sony Librie. Recently we have had explosion of larger readers too.

Now granted, the color models don't have the best contrast, but I'm pretty sure a modern Carta 1300 BW reader will be superior to your what 8 year old Carta HD reader, even with extra layers.

I had an Irex. The company went out of business a few years later. It had an 11" screen, very high contrast, supported note-taking over any kind of content, and had a nice modules API.

> Most eReaders have been 6" since the days of the Sony Librie.

7" readers were common when I brought my current one, but nowadays there are only 6" ones out there. A bit before I brought mine, there existed 8" ones, and Amazon launched an interesting A4 sized one.

That's very much bigger than a book, so I think that's probably why it's harder to replace.

There are still large format paper devices. Kobo Elipsa 2E for $350, Remarkable 2 for a touch more, etc etc. They're not sold as ebook readers, but you can read books on them fine.

You had a very niche device at the time that was far from the typical reader of 2010.

7 and 8" inch devices very much still exist. Kobo has the 7" Libra Colour and the 8" Sage. Amazon also moved the popular Paperwhite line from a 6" device to 7". Pocketbook has 7 and 8" readers. 7" only got MORE common if anything. Six inches was the most common eInk size for a long time.

You can still get big format devices with notetaking. Now the big brands like Amazon and Kobo have them in addition to smaller players like Boox or Meebook.

That's just not true. The screens on average have gotten better but not by that much.

Still to this day, people will say that the Kindle Voyage still has the best screen of an e-ink device and well it came out just over 10 years ago.

> They should be cheaper.

I'm curious how much you think an e-reader should cost?

Let's say the BOM for a bargain-bin e-reader is ~$65: e-ink display (~$25), mainboard (~$15), touchscreen and/or buttons (~$7), radios (~$3), battery (~$3), case (~$3), assembly (~$6), packaging (~$3). Forget about a charging cable. Then you've got to iron out the drivers and software, provide support, handle returns (which will be higher if you cheap out on materials) and turn a profit (assuming you're not Amazon). Let's say you charge ~1.5x BOM, now your product is ~$98.

Maybe you "borrow" your software and hardware designs from a competitor. Maybe you're willing to continuously change your company name so you can purchase low-quality parts without having to accept returns. Maybe you ask suppliers for a discount because you just know you're going to have enormous economies of scale and you're somehow more convincing than every other company (that isn't Amazon) asking for the same discount.

You do all of the above so you can sell your new e-reader for the insanely low price of $80. Will you move enough units for all that to be worth it? Are there really that many customers who would buy your $80 no-name e-reader instead of a second-hand Kindle?

that just pushes the question back a step - why is the BOM not decreasing (in real terms) over time as the components get easier and more efficient to produce?

Well the pricest component is the screen, and that's under patent.

I think rising consumer expectations soak up a lot of that -- you could make the main board and other components a third the price if you're satisfied with mid-2000s specs e.g. 200MB storage, slow page turns, bundled radios, no touchscreen, no PDF support, etc.

At some point the raw materials cost (which generally aren't getting much cheaper) becomes a major factor and that's harder to cut without a new approach.

Eink screen aside, it may be that we're just nearing the limits with current manufacturing approaches and that the next leap requires a wildly different approach.

The Rpi Zero has better CPU than the Kindle Paper White. The original sale price was $5. No way Kindle chip BOM is much more than that.

Most of the rest of your calculations mostly make sense.

Fair. I was bundling ports, memory, and connectors in the mainboard cost, but it's probably still on the high end.

6 inch color eink 24$ on alibaba, esp32 c3 cpu 3$ (incl wifi, ble, usbc) case 1$ probably. Assembly in china 3$ (done that), packaging temu style, transport temu style, touch layer I don't know.

BOM for a color eink about 35$ all together for a mass produced quantity of one, delivered anywhere (until tariffs).

Assumed quantity of customers, millions? Its so cheap that governments could give it out to schools, one eink ebook per child, cheaper than one year's worth of school books anyway.

If you can sell a functional 6" e-reader with a total BOM of $35 (i.e. retails in the ~$50 range) it seems like that would sell very well.

If it's that simple, what's your theory as to why that's not more common?

Giving E-ink Corporation most of the profit via that 25$ screen is too much risk to make back on users who actually sign up to your store and buy books vs ones that put the gift in the closet, clearance models, losing to a more popular store, etc.

> too much risk to make back on users who actually sign up to your store and buy books vs ones that put the gift in the closet, clearance models, losing to a more popular store

I definitely agree that selling hardware at cost (or at a loss) in the hopes of turning a profit off of content sales is an extremely risky strategy. Many companies try that approach, few succeed.

But if you price it like a typical consumer product and sell it for ~1.5 * BOM (i.e. ~$50 retail price on $35 BOM) then you don't need anyone to buy books because you can survive off the profit from the hardware alone. And because I believe that a $50 ereader would sell well, I don't know why they are not more common if it really is possible to build and assemble a mass-market ereader with a $35 BOM as the prior poster claimed.

During that 10 years, inflation happened. Covid supply chain issues happened. Now, tariff uncertainty is happening. At the same time, the screen resolution of these devices has increased, the refresh rates have gotten faster, etc. Yes, even a "plain black and white" e-ink screen has slowly had tech improvements. So really, the price staying the same or going up a little is pretty expected. Most also have more other features now than 10 years ago.

10+ years ago, $100 was worth significantly more. The price has gone down.

I see this both ways; and the answer is obviously supply and demand, but it's not hard to think that the tech shouldn't be like 5 bucks a pop; e.g. if it became more popular to also use these as displays etc, in much the same way that big screen tvs are used to do menus at fast food places, etc.

I just got a R36s retro handheld console for 31€ (US$35) including a 64GB microSD and shipping from Aliexpress. Apparently sometimes you can get it for as low as $25. It has a IPS instead of a eINK screen, but the CPU, RAM, Storage, battery etc. are as good or better as any ereader, so it is possible to get a tech device for way less than $80-100. But I guess it won't count as mainstream and nobody should expect support. It relies on open-source software (ArkOS) and ships pirated roms of abandoned game consoles, so there is no option for the manufacturer (unknown) to earn more after the sale.

>$80-100 is incredibly cheap for any mainstream tech device when you factor in design, manufacturing, marketing, shipping, software, support.

Not to mention that you can just buy an old generation, or used/refurbished, if you want cheaper than that.

The Kindle is still amazing value for money at any price - especially when compared to others with a smaller ecosystem. And being able to sideload DRM-free books I get on other stores (while I can) is just icing on the cake since I want to actually own my books and read them in future devices.

That said, I am very happy with my Supernote Nomad as an e-reader as well (it is a note taking device, but runs the Kindle Android app) even if it is completely out of the price range the OP discusses.