Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader has been a tremendously successful product for them. It was first launched in November of 2007 – but it was the release of the upgraded Kindle 2, in February 2009, which saw e-book readers really skyrocket. Amazon followed up with the large display Kindle DX edition in the summer of 2009 and the e-book reader market began to grow at lightning speed.

The Kindle rapidly became the number 1 selling product on the Amazon website. During the Christmas period of 2009 it became the most gifted Amazon product ever. Inevitably, a number of other manufacturers either released, or upgraded, their own e-book readers. Increased competition levels produced reduced prices and gave customers additional options – both of these are desirable of course.

With a greatly increased selection of hardware to choose from, potential e-book reader buyers require some method to compare the different options available. It’s possible to find a variety of reviews on the web which draw comparisons between 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 upon the hardware only does not fully capture the essence of the e-book reader experience. Typically, and as is often the situation with personal electronic equipment, the most recent models will tend to have some features which are not present in the older models. However, less tangible features such as usability, clarity of the screen, how many books are available, the cost of books, the ease of buying and downloading books etc. all need to be taken into account.

Many of these are subjective and a matter of personal preference, others lend themselves to analysis more easily, and can be reviewed before making a final decision regarding which reader to opt for.Amazon’s Kindle certainly has an advantage regarding the number of Kindle books available. There are more than 420,000 books to choose from on the Amazon website, and the number is getting bigger every day. When it comes to the price of books, the Kindle also appears to have the edge.

A recent study performed by the New York Times examined the comparative prices of 10 books – selected 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 Kindle, the Nook from Barnes and Noble and Sony’s PRS reader. The total cost of 10 books for the Kindle was $ 136.87 – an average of $ 13.69 per title. The same set of ten books purchased from the Sony store resulted in an average price of $ 15.26 and Barnes and Noble worked out at a significantly higher price per title of $ 19.29.

So it seems that, based on these numbers, anyone reading a book a week would be almost $ 300 a year better off by choosing the Amazon Kindle instead of 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 great deal of discussion underway between e-book retailers and the big publishing houses right now, so perhaps e-book pricing might be liable to change in the future. Nevertheless, it appears self evident that anyone thinking about buying an e-book reader would be well advised to study both the availability of books and their prices prior to making a decision on which reader to buy.

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