The new Amazon Kindle ebook reader is, for me at least, a dream come true. Certainly, I would freely admit that, as someone who counts reading as one of my main leisure activities, I must be very much Amazon’s target market. On average, I would expect to get through an absolute minimum of one book weekly – and it’s not atypical for me to have one novel, one non-fiction and any number of reference books under consideration at the same time.

I don’t believe that’s so uncommonbit of money on books. Apart from the monetary side of things, my collection of books does tend to take up quite a bit of room at home. Once in a while I go through the pile and, putting reference books and favourites to one side, have a bit of a clear out. More often than not the books go to friends or charity shops.

I recently cleared out over fifty books before moving house. It wasn’t until I saw them all, boxed up and ready to go, that I realised I was looking at a sum of money of anywhere between $500 and $1000 which had built up in just under twelve months.

Now, whilst the Amazon Kindle is a relatively expensive item in itself, the downloadable e-books from the Kindle store are typically quite a bit cheaper than the printed equivalent. After all, there are no printing and delivery costs for the publisher and no postage charges for Amazon. Even saving no more than a few dollars a book, which seems quite achievable, anyone who reads on a regular basis could pretty rapidly recover the cost of the device and then start to save money with time.

The potential benefits aren’t just financial. The Kindle 2 has a memory capacity for around 1500 e-books whereas the Kindle DX, which will begin shipping on June 10 2009, can accommodate 3500. That’s a lot of reading material – and a lot of physical storage space that will no longer be required in your home or office.

Some users have suggested that the Kindle is a green, eco-friendly, device – based upon the fact that it will save on the volume of paper used. It’s easy to see the logic, but obviously some consideration needs to be given to the materials used in production and also the way in which the device will be disposed of when it reaches the end of its useful life.

The actual benefits achieved will vary from user to user and will probably depend chiefly on the number of books bought each year. However, for keen readers, it does appear that the Kindle might offer a variety of different advantages which should more than offset the initial purchase cost.