Last year, Amazon Kindle sales saw deep discounts for Prime Day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday and various other holidays. The Kindle Paperwhite series often saw a $40 discount, the Signature Edition had a $65 savings, while the Basic Kindle was usually available for $40 off. The Kindle Scribe was slashed yearly, with over $100 in savings. In 2024, things are pretty different. Amazon Prime Day only saw a few Kindle models with a $10 to $15 discount, while the Scribe regularly receives a $100 discount, but this is not an e-reader, more of an e-notebook.
Why did Amazon cease big Kindle sales this year? The Kindle Scribe is to blame; this device is a compelling buy for about a hundred dollars more on sale than the regular price of the other Kindles. It could also be a stock problem; on Prime Day, many people took advantage of the paltry discounts, which resulted in shipping delays in some markets by over a month.
The Paperwhite series and Kindle Basic are getting long in the tooth; they are four years old at this point, and Amazon is likely working on a 12th-generation Kindle series. There are rumours that in 2025 Amazon will use colour for the first time on a Kindle, it is unknown if they will be using Gallery 3, Spectra 6 or Kaleido 3. Amazon would be the last big company to use colour on an e-reader; many other brands have been issuing new devices for years, such as Onyx Boox, Bigme, Hisense, Pocketbook, and recently Rakuten Kobo.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
