$25 discount seems kind of ridiculous. Book/magazine/etc advertising alone would be worth > $25 over the year(s) someone's got one.

Genius quote: "I'd rather pay extra for NO ADS"

... Uh, lady, you -can-. This is a discount for those who wouldn't rather pay extra. Jeez.

The weirdest thing to me about this Kindle is the price point--why not drop another $15 and make it $99? At $114, it just doesn't seem very appealing, but I feel like they could sell a ton of them advertising it as "under $100".

I would bet that is plan, when the Holiday season hits.

No one thinks this is sane, right? Have ads burned onto your reading experience for 25 freaking bucks?

I wouldn't get it, but it shouldn't actually affect the reading experience:

"When you buy Kindle with Special Offers, you are getting the same bestselling Kindle for $25 less—only $114. Special offers and sponsored screensavers display on the Kindle screensaver and on the bottom of the home screen—they don't interrupt reading."

Don't let that post confuse you. They didn't bother to read anything about it and just assumed the ads would be in the middle of the text.

This is perfectly sane. And for a bigger discount, I'd even consider one with ads in the middle of the text.

However, I already have a smartphone with the Kindle app, so it's hard to justify spending anything on another device to plug into the wall. (Especially since I don't mind reading on an LCD at all.)

When I saw the headline I assumed they'd be giving them away for free in exchange for ad space over the lifetime ownership of the device.