Don’t get too used to paying next to nothing (well…) for your Kindle books, friends. A clever analysis by a Berstein duo suggests that Amazon currently only makes a 61-cent profit for each $9.99 Kindle book it sells. Meanwhile, a $24.95 hardcover book nets Amazon a cool $4.25 in profit. So it stands to reason that, if Amazon wants to replace that lost profit, it’ll have to raise the price of Kindle downloads.
Thankfully, though, not by much. If Amazon were to raise the price of Kindle downloads to $12.50, profits would jump quite a bit: from 6 percent to 20 percent per book.
Of course, on the other hand, since it costs Amazon a heck of a lot less to send you a Kindle book via Whispernet than it does to UPS all those books to your door. So while Amazon may not make as much money for each Kindle book sold, it’s not costing them as much to send it out to you.
And I’ll consider buying a Kindle once gets closer to $200. Till then, I’ll continue to suffer with regular ol’ books.