Amazon.com Cuts Price of Kindle e-Book Reader

by Jarrett Martineau | May 27, 2008 at 12:49 pm

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I don't know about you, but 40 bucks off a Kindle isn't enough to convince me to buy one. I'll still happily haul my beat-up hardcovers and dog-eared paperbacks around in boxes, if only to be able to read them without a power adaptor or battery, and to feel my fingers on actual printed pages. I'm far from a luddite but, like Borges, I too "have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library". An actual one. With real books. Not a Paradise filled with infinite digital e-books.

Web retailer Amazon.com Inc. has nipped $40 from the price of its Kindle e-book reader.
The $399 Kindle launched last November and sold out in hours. Amazon sorted out its supply chain and manufacturing problems, and the device was back on sale in April.

Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener said Tuesday that Amazon's cost of manufacturing the Kindles dropped as it increased the number produced. He would not say how many of the e-book readers have been sold to date.

The Kindle's new $359 list price is still higher than Sony Corp.'s competing Reader, which retails for $299.