Reader’s Digest is available on the Kindle for $1.25 a month, which is pretty darn cheap compared to the cost of some of the other magazines available for the Kindle. It is a monthly magazine and is delivered to the Kindle when the print issue hits the newsstand.
Reader’s Digest is a well rounded magazine that includes a bit of finance, health, humor, stories about every day heroes and even word games. A few familiar columns that are included each month are “Life in those United States,” “Ask Laskas,” “Humor in Uniform” and others. Recently the names have been updated. For example: “Life in those United States” is now just “Life”, but the column content still remains the same.
Reader’s Digest is great for some lighthearted and companionable reading. The magazine touches on current events such as the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina, the economy, the recent elections, etc. The great part about these articles is that they tend to portray the lives and perspectives of ordinary people. Often, the most inspiring are the ones who struggle financially or otherwise themselves, but continue to give back to their community. The reading material should fare pretty well on the Kindle. It’s not always the most exciting material if you’re looking for a thrill. However, there are many helpful tips or interesting stories to choose from.
According to the brief article from WordFocus.com, Reader’s Digest was founded in 1922 as a monthly magazine by William Roy DeWitt Wallace and his wife, Lila Acheson. The number of subscriptions peaked in 1984 at seventeen million readers in the United States. Due to its nineteen foreign language editions, an additional eleven million readers were reached by the magazine. The number of readers dropped in the 1990’s, forcing layoffs and cut backs.
Reader’s Digest began accepting advertising revenue in the 1970’s according to one of the reviews of the Kindle version of the magazine on Amazon. The good part about the Kindle edition is that it does not include advertising. The reviewer pointed out they quit purchasing the print version because had become so advertisement heavy. So, Amazon is heading in the right direction with the Reader’s Digest for Kindle.
Currently, Reader’s Digest is owned by Reader’s Digest Association. (NYSE: RDA)
I have had several magazine trail periods but only kept the Reader’s Digest. The pictures and articles are easy to read and navagate. And I have found this to be the best magazine formated for the kindle maybe because of its small printed form factor.
If you download Calibre, you can get Reader’s Digest directly from their website, all properly formatted as a magazine with pictures, all articles, etc. Calibre grabs the articles from the website and puts them into a single file and transfers it to the Kindle.
In reply to TEO: I have used calibre and Instapaper.com to build my own reading list. But, honestly it is not worth the effort to save $1.25.
Actually RD is not really monthly anymore, I believe they publish 10 issues annually. I’m not sure if that is Kindle only or print as well. This is still a bargain in my opinion.
I love reading reader’s digest so much i subscribed to the kindle edition. I just have this slight problem which I’m hoping there is a quick fix.Every few pages, the last sentence in the page would only show half of what it should be which leaves me guessing as to what it really is. I hope you reply and can get me a quick fix.
Thanks.