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Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader has proven to be a hugely successful product for them. It was first released in November of 2007 – but it was the launch of the updated Kindle 2, in February 2009, which saw e-book readers really become established. Amazon followed up with the large format Kindle DX edition in the summer of 2009 and the e-book reader market started to grow at lightning speed.

The Kindle rapidly became Amazon’s best selling product. Over the festive period of 2009 it became Amazon’s “most gifted” ever product. Predictabl, a number of other manufacturers either launched, or updated, e-book readers of their own. Increased competition levels produced lower prices and gave end users additional options - both of which are desirable of course.

With significantly increased choices on offer, potential e-book reader buyers require some way to compare the different options presented to them. It’s possible to find a lot of reviews on the internet which compare the Kindle with Sony’s Daily Edition reader, Barnes and Noble’s Nook reader with the iPad etc. However, a comparison of e-book readers which is focussed solely upon the hardware is missing the point of the e-book reader experience. As a rule, and as is often the situation with personal electronic equipment, the most recent models will tend to incorporate some features which are lacking in the older models. However, considerations like ease of use, readability of the display, the number of available books, the price of books, the ease of buying and downloading books etc. all need to be taken into consideration.

Some of these are subjective and a matter of personal preference, others are more objective and can be reviewed before selecting an e-book reader as a purchase.Amazon’s Kindle certainly has an advantage when it comes to the number of Kindle books available. There are more than 420,000 books available on the Amazon website, and the number is growing every day. As far as the cost of books is concerned, the Kindle also looks to have a clear advantage.

A recent study carried out by the New York Times looked at the comparative prices of ten books – chosen from the New York Times 10 Best books of 2009, comprising 5 fiction and 5 non-fiction titles - on the three most popular e-book readers, the Sony reader, the Kindle and the Nook. The total cost of 10 books for the Kindle was $ 136.87 – an average of $ 13.69 per title. The same collection of ten books bought from the Sony store gave an average price of $ 15.26 and Barnes and Noble equated to a significantly higher price per title of $ 19.29.

So it seems that, based on these numbers, anyone reading a book a week would save to the tune of $300 per annum by going for the Amazon Kindle as opposed to the Nook. In fact, the Kindle reader would finance itself and there would still be a few dollars left over to buy books, in under 12 months. There’s a lot of discussion in process between e-book retailers and the major publishing firms right now, so perhaps e-book pricing might be likely to change in the future. Nevertheless, it seems self evident that anyone considering buying an e-book reader would do well to examine both the availability of books and their pricing before finally choosing the e-book reader.