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The Kindle saves space, but can it save you money
A ZDNet article that ran on November 16 asked the question “Is the Kindle electronic book reader worth its current price of $359.00?” The article explores the answer to this question for college students and average readers.
For students in college and graduate school, ZDNet concludes that a Kindle is worth the expense:
However, a more realistic scenario [of student textbook purchasing] would be a blended cost, with half new and half used [textbooks], at $366.00 per semester. If they had purchased all of the books on the Kindle, they would have spent $234.00, or a savings of $132.00 per semester. Over a period of 8 semesters, that’s $1056.00, which if you subtract the cost of the Kindle at current prices, we’re talking about a net savings of $700.86 over four years, which is not insignificant. To put this another way, if college students had the ability to buy all their textbooks on Kindles, they could wipe out the cost of a Kindle with their savings over printed books in 3 semesters, or a year and a half.
However, the the article states that for the average reader, a Kindle is not a wise economic choice:
… we took a look at twelve New York Times best sellers, and totaled up the prices, assuming mostly hardcover with some paperbacks — this came to $168.15 if we bought them on Amazon. The Kindle cost would have been $109.11. In other words, if you read one book per month, and you subtract the cost of the Kindle, your net savings per year is approximately $59.04. To wipe out the cost of the Kindle completely, you have to buy and read six books per month to wipe out the Kindle’s cost over the course of one year. That’s a pretty voracious reading schedule — and if you’re reading that many books, you’re probably spending most of your time in a library and not purchasing them on Amazon.
So it would seem that unless the convenience factor of the Kindle currently outweighs its costs, the Kindle is not a huge value proposition for your average consumer today. But if its cost were to drop approximately in half – say, between the 3 and 4 book per month level — at around $200 per unit – then we might start seeing greater e-book adoption by a larger segment of the population. At the two books per month level, it’s going to need to cost around $125.00 or $150.00 or so.
I agree that it would be nice if a Kindle reading device would be at least half its current price, but I still think that it is a good investment over the long term. Additionally, you don’t have to pay to store paper books, which shaves off a little bit more from the equation.
What do our readers who own Kindles think of the article? Is the author right about it being about convenience and not cost? Let us know your opinion in the comments.
Previously on Unclutterer:
Popularity: 7% [?]
Book review: The Experts’ Guide to Doing Things Faster
On Monday, I had my wisdom teeth pulled, and spent most of the day propped up in bed catching up on some reading. One of the books I read, The Experts’ Guide to Doing Things Faster created by Samantha Ettus, was a quick, fun, and informative read. The book is a series of 100 essays by professionals who are experts in their fields. Each essay focuses on how to be efficient at one aspect of living.
The first 16 essays address issues in the home, and the next 11 essays provide tips for work. Mind, body, love, pleasure, travel, and future round out the other subject areas of the book.
The following are some of my favorite essays and a tip or two from their content:
- “Do Laundry” by Lucinda Ottusch: “Make laundry more tolerable by transforming your laundry room into a livable, productive workspace.” (pg. 25)
- “Organize Your Closet” by John Trosko: “Successful closet organizing requires tough choices about what flatters your best assets and what doesn’t. Forecast what your life will hold for you in the next year. Everything in your closet should have a purpose for today and tomorrow, not yesterday.” (pg. 33)
- “Sort Mail” by Peter Walsh: “Decrease the amount of mail coming into your home by getting your name off junk-mail lists. Phone 1-888-5OPT OUT (1-888-567-8688) to have your name removed from lists that send those annoying credit card offers. Likewise, log onto www.catalogchoice.org to remove your name from lists that stuff your mailbox with unwanted catalogs.” (pg. 37)
- “Find a Lost Object” by Michael Solomon: “IT’S NOT LOST — YOU ARE. Accept that the problem is not with the object — it’s with you! For there are no lost objects — only unsystematic searchers.” (pg. 55).
- “Bake a Cake” by Warren Brown: His advice is good, but the best part of this essay is that he includes his recipe for vanilla cake with chocolate glaze icing. Yum! (pg. 251)
- “Holiday Shop” by Paco Underhill: “Make a list of people to buy for. Jot ideas or specific gifts on your list for easy reference. Don’t buy for anyone who isn’t on your list — there must be a reason why he or she didn’t make it on the first time.” (pg. 264)
I recommend checking out the book if you’re interested in reading something fun on efficiency. I certainly enjoyed this book.
Popularity: 8% [?]
Yearbooks: Worth keeping or clutter?
About once a month, a reader writes to us asking what to do with his or her large stash of yearbooks. Whenever this question comes to me, I’m always at a loss for what kind of advice to give. I have all of my old yearbooks — a spiral bound paper one from elementary school, two paper ones stapled together from middle school, four traditional ones from high school, and two traditional ones from college — and my husband has five of his. They take up a cube on our bookshelf and sit beneath our reference books.
In a way, I think of these books as reference materials. If a person I don’t remember makes a request to connect to me on Facebook or LinkedIn, and the request states that I went to school with the person, I’ll head to my yearbooks hoping that a picture of the person will spark my memory. I also look through the portraits before heading to class reunions, but those are pretty much the only times I look at them.
However, the idea of getting rid of them sort of makes me nauseated. Maybe a part of me is fearful that one day I’ll lose my memory and need them to recreate my past? Maybe I hope that my children will be interested in them and want to better understand who I was when I was their age? Even though I can’t exactly identify why I keep them, I have carved out a place for them in my home.
My advice is that if you want to keep them, then it’s okay to keep them. Store them in a place that is safe (not in a cardboard box in a mildewy basement) and scan any pages that you would be crushed to lose if your home were destroyed by a natural disaster. Remember to backup your hard drive at an off-site location so that you won’t lose your data in an emergency.
If you don’t have any desire to keep them, then scan individual pages you want to keep digitally and recycle the books. You might e-mail your former classmates and see if any of them are interested in the books if you don’t want to toss them straight into the recycling bin. You also could contact your school’s historical society and see if they would want them, or if a current journalism teacher at the school might have use for them.
How have you handled your yearbooks? Do you have additional advice for what to do with yearbooks? Your ideas are welcome in the comments.
Popularity: 14% [?]
The phone book problem
Reader Alisa sent us the following question:
How do you stop phone books from showing up at your door? I don’t need a new phone book every year. I hardly use the one I have. What a waste of paper!
Oh, Alisa, I understand your frustration. Just last week I picked up one of the three delivered to my home in a year and tossed it straight into the recycling bin.
Unfortunately, I have no good news for you. Despite all of my efforts over the past couple years, I have been unsuccessful at getting any of the three to stop bringing them to me. I have called customer service agents at the publishing companies, been told that I have been removed from a list, only to find it delivered again 12 months later. In all cases, the phone books are thrown onto our front porch by a person in a van who has no distribution list. Everyone gets one. Period.
There are a number of petition sites online that promise to pass your loathing along to the publishing companies that produce these books, but most of them appear to be ways to obtain your e-mail address for spamming purposes. So, I have no hope to offer you.
I want to open up the comments, however, to our readership who may have some sort of special knowledge about how to get off the lists. Or, maybe our readers have fantastic ideas for what to do with the pages to not make it a complete travesty of wasted paper. Let us know what you know in the comments!
Popularity: 14% [?]
O’Reilly embraces ebook technology and releases 30 digital titles
Technology publishing giant O’Reilly recently announced that many of its popular titles will be released in ebook format. The press release “30 O’Reilly Titles Now Available as Ebook Bundles” explains how you can now buy these electronic titles through the O’Reilly store and download them in the ebook reader format of your choice.
The three ebook formats available are EPUB, PDF, and Mobipocket, and these formats are compatible with Adobe Digital Editions, Kindle, Blackberries, and Sony Reader.
The electronic titles aren’t just about writing programming code, like so many great O’Reilly books are. Subject to Change: Creating Great Products & Services for an Uncertain World covers strategic planning and Making Things Happen: Mastering Project Management discusses project management strategies. Mind Performance Hacks includes strategies for improving your analytical reasoning and focus. There also are guides for using Wikipedia and Facebook, and a book on transforming your home into a smart house.
The fewer books taking up space on your bookshelves, the easier it is to keep your bookshelves in order. Thank you, O’Reilly, for embracing the ebook market!
Popularity: 19% [?]
