The Cheapskate

Buy any New York Times bestsellers in e-book format, get the full purchase price refunded to your Micropay account.

(Credit: Fictionwise)

Like e-books, but hate paying those exorbitant prices? E-bookseller Fictionwise (which was recently acquired by Barnes & Noble) is offering a deal that's pretty sweet: a 100% rebate on all New York Times bestsellers.

Let me clarify: You get a 100% Micropay rebate. What's Micropay? One way to buy e-books from Fictionwise is to set up a Micropay account, which is basically just a debit account (not unlike Microsoft's Points system for Xbox and Zune).

Basically, you add funds to it (in $5 increments via check, credit card, or PayPal), then draw on those funds each time you buy a book.

The bestsellers deal works like this: When you buy one or more books on the list, using your credit card or PayPal, Fictionwise credits the full purchase price back to your Micropay account. So it's kind of like getting the books for free.

Now, I know what you're thinking, and the answer is no: Purchases made via Micropay don't qualify for Micropay rebates. Otherwise you'd be getting rebates in perpetuity and, well, Fictionwise ain't that dumb.

The reality, then, is that when you buy one or more books on the bestsellers list, you get full credit back in Micropay, which you can then use to get additional other books. More of a buy-one-get-one-free kind of deal.

Make sense? These are real-deal NYT bestsellers, by the way, with titles like "The Kite Runner," "The Girl Who Played with Fire," and "Eat, Pray, Love." The only downside is that they're all pretty pricey: many sell in the $15-20 range, whereas the Kindle versions mostly go for $10.

On the other hand, Fictionwise offers e-books in a variety of formats, many of which are compatible with a wide range of devices. Still, if you're shopping for e-books for, say, your iPhone, you'll want to crunch the numbers to make sure the Micropay rebate is a better deal than, say, buying books in the Kindle store to read in the eponymous app.

Ultimately, I think most avid e-book readers will find some great savings here.

Amazon inexplicably charges nearly as much for the e-book edition as for the hardcover.

(Credit: Amazon)

Dear e-book publishers: stop gouging us.

Look, I'm your biggest fan. I've been reading digitally distributed fiction and non-fiction since the early days of the PalmPilot.

The most frequently used apps on my iPhone, bar none, are Kindle, eReader, and Stanza.

But I'm getting increasingly frustrated with e-book prices, which rarely represent a savings over their print (aka dead-tree) counterparts.

Case in point: I just read a glowing review of Jonathan Tropper's "This is Where I Leave You." I'm sold; I want it. But something's amiss here: Amazon's hardcover price is $15.57, while the Kindle edition sells for $14.01.

Now, I understand books cost money. There's editing, publishing, and distribution. Paper, ink, trucks, gasoline. Storage, shipping, shelf space, sales staff. And the countless people involved in all those transactions.

E-books, on the other hand, consume zero trees. They weigh nothing, occupy no physical space, and don't get shipped in the traditional sense. Middlemen are few and far between. So you're left with, what, editing costs and the pittance you pay the authors?

Explain to me, then, why the e-book edition of "This is Where I Leave You" sells for $14.01. The $.01 suggests there must be some calculation at work, some formula you use to determine that Kindle and iPhone owners get to save all of a buck-fifty-six when they read green.

The Kindle is a bit more affordable at $299, but there are still cheaper alternatives.

(Credit: Amazon)

As you may have heard, Amazon just dropped the price of the Kindle 2 to $299.

As a fan of A) e-books, B) gadgets, and C) deals, I'm pleased--but I still think there are better, cheaper alternatives. Hear me out.

For starters, the 8GB iPod Touch does waaaay more than the Kindle (you don't really need me to list everything, do you? Music, videos, games, Internet, apps of all kinds...), but costs just $229. Heck, get a refurb for $179--I just did.

Obviously the Touch has a smaller screen than the Kindle, but it's also a backlit touch screen. Just yesterday I spent the better part of a five-hour flight reading an e-book on my iPhone (via the Kindle app, ironically). No eyestrain, no headaches, no problem. Try it before you pooh-pooh it. (I also routinely read in bed with it. Can't do that with the Kindle unless there's a light on.)

Here's an even more radical idea: buy a Netbook. As regular Cheapskate readers know, it's not uncommon to find models selling for as low as $200, sometimes even less.

And with a couple minor tweaks, it's a simple matter to turn your Netbook into a Kindle. Yes, I know, it's heavier and bulkier--but it's also a full-blown computer!

My goal here is not to trash the Kindle, which I think is a terrific device. (Anything that encourages reading is aces in my book.) In fact, it's even more terrific now that you can (cheap plug alert!) read the Cheapskate blog on it.

But $299 is still too high, at least for me. (Amazon needs to lower its e-book prices, too, but that's a gripe for another day.) What about you? How much would you pay for a Kindle?

Want an Amazon Kindle but can't stomach the $359 price tag? (Me, neither.) This might be the next best thing: Borders has the Sony Reader PRS-505 for $199.99 shipped. (Apply coupon code SONY505READ at checkout to get that price.)

Like the Kindle, the Sony Reader is an e-book viewer. Though it can't download them wirelessly, Sony's eBook Store does carry about 100,000 titles as well as half a million public-domain works from Google. Alas, most of the commercial books are priced a few bucks higher than Amazon's.

Before jumping on this deal, you'll definitely want to read David Carnoy's review of the PRS-505. You can also see his video review up above.

Much as I'm liking this price, my e-book reader of choice remains my iPhone. I've gotten a surprising amount of flak for this (notably in this post about freebie books--many of which are still available, by the way), for reasons I don't fully understand, but I still can't see buying and carrying a separate, single-purpose device when I can read comfortably on the device I'm already carrying.

What do you think? Is $199 a good entry point for an e-book reader with a nice, big screen? If so, act fast: I'm not sure when this code expires, but probably quite soon.