Review: A different view on pricing
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 09 6, 2010
I'm not going to bother discussing the content. Anyone looking at these reviews probably knows what The Economist is and believes the content to be great. The issue, here, is the Kindle offering, most notably, the price.Yes, it's expensive, and yes, I wish they'd reduce it a bit. But I'm not as outraged as some other reviewers.In comparing Kindle vs. web and paper, it is reasonable to consider, among all the factors discussed by others, the nature of Kindle itself. I notice that with the Kindle subscription, I find myself comfortably reading pretty much the whole issue. With print, I read just a small fraction.One factor, undoubtedly, is font adjustment. I'm getting to the age where reading hard-copy newspapers and magazines is becoming a bit of an exertion, so this is a huge factor. Of course web browsers allow for font adjustment, but I spend enough time working in front of a computer. I do cherish opportunities to do some things in different settings, such as an easy chair, or out on the lawn.I also wonder if the more stripped-down emphasis on text is a factor as well. There's not as much to look at with the Kindle edition (they do try to put in some pictures and charts, but visuals are not what Kindle does best). With the magazine, there's so much to look at, I spend too much time going back and forth. Ditto the web site, where there are so many things to click on. With Kindle, there are lots of little easily-digestible text nuggets and I just go from one to the next.I'm not sure if my explanations of why I read more on the Kindle version is accurate (I'll leave the details for amazon's usability experts to study), but I do notice the same phenomenon with my Kindle version of The New Yorker, where I abandoned the print version altogether.Speaking for myself, I'm getting a lot more bang for the buck with the Kindle subscription. Hence my willingness to tolerate the pricing.