To Kindle Or Not To Kindle

I've been having a debate with myself and I need some feedback. Recently, the Amazon Kindle received a price drop to $259. When it originally launched it had a price tag of $400, which just seemed like a ridiculous price tag for the Kindle, but now at $259, the portable book reader is much more tempting.

To explain what the Kindle is, as it seems many outside the tech community have no idea what it is, it's a portable book reader. You buy e-books which you upload onto the Kindle and read your books from this tablet computer looking device. Additionally, it has free 3G service built in so that you can browse for books and download them on the fly. Finally, it has integration with my iPhone so the books I buy on the Kindle are available on my iPhone and it all syncs up wirelessly so that if I open the book on my iPhone, I'll be in the same exact place as I was on the Kindle and vice versa. That's important if I feel like reading a chapter on short bus ride but don't want to drag the Kindle out with me. There's a few other bells and whistles, but I don't particularly care for them as much as I care about the ones I've mentioned.

There a few reasons I'm having the debate. On the plus side, it's cool, new tech and that is always enticing to me. The ability to carry this small, thin device around instead of a bulky book is very nice as well. Getting books on the go, without having to stop into the book store, or not having to worry about bringing two books onto the train because I'm almost finished with first, is convenient. And the (generally) $9.99 price tag on even new releases is a great price break for the $20-$35 price tag and brand new hard backs. Also, the clutter that my book collection causes in our house is getting silly at this point.

On the down side, I'm stuck buying books from the Amazon store. They have a huge selection, but some of the smaller publishing houses aren't on board yet, and lots of the books that I can only find at places like Unabridged likely won't be available. Also, I never really buy new releases. I'm the kind of reader that snags books on sale or get the $7.99 paper back version of a book. And it just seems close to silly to not have a physical book in hand, even though the Kindle would be easier to handle than a bound book. I also kind of enjoy showing off my books, even if they clutter up the second bed room.

So I'm left struggling with whether or not the Kindle would be worth it. Sure, I can get digital copies of any book in PDF format and Amazon will upload it for me (for a fee, of course), but do I want to do that. I do kind of enjoy going to the bookstore and browsing. On the same token, I use to adore going to the record store and browsing, but now that I've transitioned to all digital music, I've not missed the store one bit and have even found browsing iTunes and Amazon MP3 even more than physical stores sometimes. That makes me think that the switch to digital books would be similar. But even at $249, the Kindle seems pretty pricy to me.

So what do you think? Is it worth it? Should I just stick to my bound books for now, or should I make the jump to the Kindle?

Oh, and dear FTC: No, I'm not receiving anything free from Amazon to write about their Kindle. Don't fine me. KTHXBAI