e-books get cheaper: $40 discounts on Kindle

The first time I heard about e-books, I was in journalism school back in the early 1990s. I remember lively debates about whether newspapers, magazine and books would be rendered obsolete by the turn of the century, replaced by electronic versions you could hold in the palm of your hand. At the time, these predictions seemed both blasphemous and futuristic.

Last year, when I read about Kindle, Amazon.com's e-book reader, I still didn't believe wireless reading devices would catch on. Kindle sold out in hours after it was released in November, 2007, and remained out of stock for months.

Now Kindle is back, and I read in paidcontent.org that Amazon has lowered the price by $40, which is surprising, given its success when it was launched. It's now going for for $359, still more expensive than Sony's competing digital book, which sells for about $300. Apparently, as production of the Kindle reader increased, manufacturing costs decreased, in turn lowering the retail price.