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Comment by chalgo | Hacker News Reader

This is just a sales spike due to the new user period. When a user gets a ebook reader for the first time they will buy lots of books to fill the device, including books they already own. Once sales to new users drops off the sales rate will also flatten out. I believe digital will ultimately be the bigger platform in future due to convenience of buying a book and getting it instantly (rather than waiting for the post man).

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This is the opposite of my experience: when I got my kindle, I bought one book, started reading it, and when I finished I bought the next. Over time, as I've become more confident that I'm going to use the Kindle long-term, I'm more willing to buy a book when I see it and "add it to the queue" rather than only buying when I need a new one.

The nice thing is that there's really no penalty to waiting until the very last second to buy the next book, even if you're traveling (unless you're actually on the plane.)

I went the opposite route - started out with buying nothing (pirated my books) and as I started slamming my way through books, I started buying the titles because they were better formatted and I wanted to support my favourite authors.

Considering the Kindle has about 3GB of space, I doubt people will ever really fill it.

Which is enough for two to three thousand thick books. And I believe that, unlike Apple, Amazon will let you delete and redownload books at will.

Not sure if the Kindle works the same way as an iPhone. I can see iPhone users buying lots of apps to show off their phone's capabilities, but ebooks look pretty much alike. So one is enough to show off the capabilities of the reader.

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