How To Own a Kindle and Not Be a Pretentious Moneywaster

Pictured: Probably not saving money

Monetary issues

• 1 Kindle costs $139 dollars plus shipping. Lets round this to 140 for simplicity’s sake.
• Kindle books cost around 10 dollars (Assuming you buy them from amazon), plus you can virtually any classic for free
• Your average paperback book goes for around 15 to 20 dollars, your average hardcover going for around 25 – 30 dollars

So it follows that if you only buy paperbacks that each purchase saves around 5 dollars.
Simple math would tell you that in order for the Kindle to break even you would have to read 28 books. It doesn’t seem like much, but this gets a bit complicated when you factor in that the cost of 28 paperback books (or a kindle with 28 books) is $420. However, if you read that many books it may be profitable for you to get a hold of a kindle.

You can, however get a huge number of classics for free. This is easily accomplished due to the fact that the kindle actually supports .txt files! And thanks to the existence of Project Gutenberg, Classics in .txt format are not difficult to come by.
Take, for example, Stoker’s Dracula. Because Dracula’s copyright has expired, Gutenberg can distribute a digitized version of it. Upon searching their website, I found that they not only had a .txt version, but a kindle ebook as well!
However certain books are not available in Gutenberg’s website. As an alternative, their branch located in Australia has many books that their US branch does not (e.g. Animal Farm, The Great Gatsby, 1984, etc.)

There’s no real way to get around the fact that the Kindle is pretty useless unless you read quite a bit. However, it can be useful and convenient for those who read a great deal.