The days where all Kindle best sellers were $9.99 or less may be long behind us, but for e-book aficionados who prefer Amazon's e-readers (or the equivalent app on their iPad or other mobile device), on August 24, Amazon.com introduced a new feature that offers up heavily discounted Kindle e-books. The Kindle Daily Deal is posted each day at 12:00 AM Pacific time and runs for 24 hours. If you don't want to keep checking the site to find the title being offered, Amazon is also pushing the info via Twitter, Facebook and the Kindle Daily Post.
So how good are the savings? Are the e-books being discounted worthy of picking up, or are they 100 year old public domain "classics" that you can pick up for free on Google? I'll let you be the judge of the worthiness, but so far there's been no sign of trying to slip in any Jane Austen. Here's the title and pricing rundown of Kindle Daily Deals since the inaugural version:
August 24: "The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane" for $1.39 (75 percent off).
August 25: "Water for Elephants" for $2.99 (57 percent off).
August 26: "Elizabeth Street" for $1.99 (75 percent off).
August 27: "Food, Inc." for $1.49 (83 percent off).
August 28: "The Lincoln Lawyer" for $2.99 (63 percent off).
August 29: "Hidden in Plain View" for $0.99 (88 percent off).
August 30: "Darkness Visible" for $1.49 (85 percent off).
Not too bad for the first week. There are some best-seller titles in the list and the the average discount off Amazon's regular Kindle prices has been 75 percent. Unlike paper book sales, there's no shipping cost to jack up the end price. If you have a Kindle, it's definitely worth checking in each day.