Why choose Kindle over Nook?
This is probably the only point where I'm going to sound a little like an advertisement. I chose Kindle for several reasons, the main one being that Nook wanted account information despite the fact that the ebook I was trying to buy was free. With Amazon as long as you have an account you can download as many free books as you want. Second reason is because Kindle holds pretty much 66% of the share of ebooks with Nook being 33% (there are others, but that gives you a breakdown of the big two). Finally, the third reason is because I publish through Amazon, and it would be hypocritical to choose a device that I don't even publish on.
That said, let's move on to the real reason I'm writing this.
Ebook Pricing
The price of ebooks is tricky. Ebooks were originally made with the mindset that they would be much cheaper than regular books, instead what we've been handed is way overpriced digital copies that you don't even legally own and are frequently more expensive than a mass market paperback. It's this very reason that, given an equally-priced choice, I would pick the physical book every time.
Let's do a breakdown of pricing.
Mistborn trilogy box set by Brandon Sanderson
$16.11 for mass market paperback
$15.30 for Kindle
Now, these prices might be different by the time you read this, but Mistborn gives you an idea of poor pricing. It's not the fault of Sanderson himself, or even Amazon. For big-name published books the price is set by the publisher. This is one of those examples that I would chose the paperbacks every time.
Allegiant, by Veronica Roth
$11.57 for hardback
$3.75 for Kindle
Normally this is a deal I can get behind, but I already owned the first two books in physical format and had already purchased Allegiant in October. I try to keep my series in the same format when possible. If you check now, however, the Kindle version is $6.99, I'll come back to the fluctuating later (under the section Fluctuating Prices.)
Hunger Games box set by Suzanne Collins
$22.94 for trade paperback
$5 for Kindle (now $14.99)
The Sight and Fell by David Clement-Davies
Unavailable as a set in paperback but they are $8.09 and $8.96 respectively.
$0.00 for Kindle (now $7.99)
Cold Days by Jim Butcher
$7.23 for mass market paperback
$2.49 for Kindle (now $4.99, although I suspect it will become $7.99 in the future.)
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| Like I really needed another copy of Cold Days. |
Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
$27.47 for mass market paperback
$9.99 for Kindle (likely $19.99 if you check now)
Holy insubstantial electronic text, Batman! How in the world did I manage to get the entire series for $2 per ebook?
Now that you've seen pricing, let me lay down a good rule:
Never pay more than $3 for a Kindle Book.
There are exceptions, like if you know it's not going to get any better than that. I can promise you that you won't see Allegiant for less than $3.75. Now, why do so many of the ebooks I mention cost more than that? Because, technically, they are book sets. Each book in the Hunger games costs $1.66, each book in Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones is $2 per book. Good luck getting those prices for paperbacks, even if they are used copies.
Those examples there show you how ebooks were originally supposed to work as a much cheaper alternative.
How in the world are you going to keep from missing out though? Here's where I break down my method.
Kindle Daily Deals
These are actually really good deals. I've seen ebooks normally costing about $7.99 go for $2.99 or even less. They used to only have one Kindle Daily Deal but have since expanded upon it, now offering a minimum of 4 deals per day. Usually the four categories are: Main (listed as The Kindle Daily Deal), Romance Daily Deal, Science Fiction and Fantasy Deal, and Kids/Teen Daily Deal (it generally alternates between being a children's book or a YA book). I have sometimes seen them list others, at the moment of this writing (which is much earlier than what it is scheduled to post) the Kids/Teen deal is currently replaced by History Daily Deal, I have also seen Religion and Spirituality Daily Deal as well as others.
They change at midnight (1:00 AM where I live) and are worth checking every day. Most of them are generally books you've never heard of, indie authors, but sometimes they'll list a big-name author (although I have been genuinely surprised by some indie authors). I usually jump on those because they're usually books I've been very interested in but have been too hesitant to commit because I don't want to throw $10-$25 at a gamble for the chance that I might hate or like the story. It's much easier to take a chance when you're only gambling with less than $5 on an ebook Daily Deal. Here's a breakdown of what I've learned. All of these are big-name authors that you can walk into any book store and pick up a copy.
Books bought: 7
Disappointed:3
Liked it (though not enough to continue the series):3
Loved it so much I bought a hardback copy as well as the sequel in hardback: 1
I paid a total of $19.30 for all seven of these (not including taxes). This is the price of two mass market paperbacks or one hardcover copy (or less, two of these were graphic novels which can retail for about $20-$30 for hardback on average)
The Daily Deal is definitely worth checking every day you have a spare 10 seconds, a spare 2 minutes if you actually want to buy one, or a spare 5 minutes if you're not sure and want to read a preview. I keep the Kindle Daily Deal bookmarked because it's a little awkward to find it in Amazon's website. If you don't want to bookmark it, just Google "Kindle Daily Deal" rather than sift through Amazon, it will take you right there.
Kindle Monthly Deals
Kindle Monthly Deals are another really good set of deals. Like Daily Deals, the Monthly Deals offer a bunch of $8+ ebooks for $3 or less, except you don't have just 24 hours to decide. As the name suggests, the Monthly Deals start at the first of the month and run through until the end. Most of them are indie names, and you won't find a whole lot that you'll probably be interested it, but once every couple of months or so, you'll find a real gem.
Not all good prices come from the monthly or daily deals, however. All of those books I mentioned above in the pricing comparison? Not a single one was a monthly or daily deal, and that's when we get to...
Fluctuating Prices
Sometimes the price changes for ebooks. These price changes will last anywhere from a weekend, a month, a season (like summer, or the holidays), to permanently (although this is rare). Why?
Indie Authors: They have control over every aspect of their pricing. Dusted retailed at $1.99 for its first couple of months but I changed it for the reason I suspect lots of authors do: better sales. Although I have seen some authors temporarily put their book "on sale", lowering the price for a certain amount of time they choose before raising it back up again.
Large-name published books: ?!?
I really have no idea. Maybe the planets align in just the right way or something. They certainly don't adjust the price as the book gets older, nor do I suspect if they want it to be "on sale" like indie authors do, but when a book gets lowered to an awesome price, how are you going to keep track of these? I have two methods:
Top 100
People find out about good prices on ebooks somehow. Maybe there's a single, crazy guy who does nothing but scour through every Kindle book to look for a cheaper price, then tells everyone.
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| Our hero. |
This particular technique is how I managed to find all of those books mentioned above at good prices. I highly suggest checking late Fridays and Saturdays since those are the two days they're more likely to have lowered prices, and later in the day so that more and more people discover the sale, thus managing to bump it up into the top 100 best sellers. I once saw every book in the Maximum Ride series lower to $1.99 for a single Saturday.
Wishlist/Watchlist
This works better with indie books, I've found, since they're more likely to fluctuate in price or become freebies for a certain amount of time. If you find yourself interested in a Kindle ebook, but don't want to pay the current price listed for it, throw it into a wishlist. You can make multiple wishlists on Amazon and label them accordingly, I list mine as "Kindle Books" but you're free to name it whatever you want, like "Ebook Watchlist." From there you can just keep an eye on them and Amazon will tell you if the price reduces and for how much since you added it to the list (oddly enough they don't tell you when the price goes up from when you added it...) I've gotten a handful of reduced-price indie ebooks this way and, even better, gotten a couple of them for free. Again, I suggest reviewing this list Friday and Saturday, but unlike the 100 best-selling list, this one is not affected by other people finding it and is more about patience than random opportunity.
Everything Else
Here are some other, smaller things to consider.
First Book and Sequels
I only ever add the first book in a series to my Kindle Wishlist/Watchlist. The reason is because the first book is most likely to go on sale, no one is going to buy Book 2 in a series if they don't own Book 1, no matter how cheap Book 2 is. Some people think that by lowering Book 2's price, people will buy Book 1 and Book 2, thus doubling the sales. If you're like me (and that would make you very much under-appreciated in writing talent as well as a snappy dresser) then you won't bother with either of them.
Box Set Vs Single Books
Be careful when buying a "Box Set" of ebooks, there have been times where I've seen the single editions sell for cheaper, combined, than the set ($2, $2, $2 each versus $8 for the box set, for example). This usually happens with indie authors because we can't do math and we hope you can't either. The reverse, however, is also true. I've seen single books cost $0.99 each and the box set itself also cost $0.99. Check out the author's page of book listings before you commit to anything.
Gift Cards
If you're like me (and that would make you have a raging cause of consecitaleophobia)...
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| GAH! |
Amazon $1.99
Amazon $2.99
Amazon $0.99
You're going to run out of room pretty quickly. Instead what I like to do is buy a gift card somewhere and apply it to my account. From there all of your Buy With One Click ebooks get automatically deducted from the gift card amount instead of your checking. When buying other items from Amazon, just specify that you don't want to deduct from the gift card amount while putting in your purchase information if you only want to save the gift card for Kindle books.
Confused? You'll get the hang of it, or feel free to ask me any questions in the comments section.
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