12 free books a year say at average cost of $10 is still $120 of added value to a Prime subscription.

Plus that's still more books than the average American reads every year.

This article (from 2007) indicates that ~25% didn't read any, while the rest read a median of 9 books each/year.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08...

I'd wager the average Kindle owner is not the same as the average American in this regard.

What makes you think that? With the low price of the Kindle, I could see even very casual readers picking one up and not using it much.

Average American is not even a casual reader.

Does anyone have any real data about the reading habits of the "average American?" I know several people, including my parents, that read many books a year but do not have Kindles. I also know several people who own Kindles but do not read many books a year.

Consistently, quarter of Americans claim not to have read any books in the year preceding the poll. My guess is that a real percentage of people who do not read books is in 35-45% range -- admitting not to read books is kind of shameful in western culture.

... but not more books than I read in a year.

The problem with that stat is that it includes the great number of people who read zero books in a year, which skews the average pretty significantly.

Well, they would still like you to buy books. But this is a great supplement. I can also get free ebook "loans" from my local library, but with a 2 week loan period and there's often a waiting list to get popular books.

I find that 2 weeks isn't enough time for me. So, the no due date idea is quite compelling. Grad. school + fatherhood makes for little reading time.

Once a month seems extremely reasonable to me, but obviously it all depends on your personal reading habits. I read every day on the train to work, and it takes me about 2 months to finish a 1000 page novel.

Yes, and '5000 books' is a pretty low number, all things considered.

Although choose 12 out of 5000 makes it not so bad.

It's not a bad start, though. I'm pretty sure that this number will go up over time.

I'm sure it will, I'm just surprised they started with such a small number, something like less than 1% of all their Kindle books if I'm not mistaken.