What would it take for you to buy an Amazon Kindle? Would you suffer through a few well-placed ads for $25 off a regular Kindle e-reader?

Amazon just took the largest leap in e-reader history. Yesterday, Amazon announced it would release a "Kindle with Special Offers" for $114 (normal one sells for $139) on May 3 that's supported by ads. You're probably cringing at the thought right now and thinking "great, another way for advertisers to shove their pointy noses into our gadgets" but it's actually not that bad.

The online retailer says not to worry though — the hardware will remain identical to the base Wi-Fi model. The catch is in the ads. Targeted ads will only populate screen savers and at the bottom of the homescreen, but never on the "pages" of any e-books. That sounds fair, right? If you can buy a TV and expect to watch commercials, then why not a few ads on an e-reader?

In an attempt to make the ads less of a bugger, Amazon is even going as far as letting Kindle users vote for what ads they want to see on their e-reader via the web or its AdMash Kindle app.

It all sounds unobtrusive right? Well, that's the point. Amazon believes that ads are ok, so long as they don't ruin the reading experience. What we're interested in knowing is, as the title asks: how much is your personal space worth to you? Is $25 enough to barrage your e-reader with ads?

What's even more impressive will be the end-result. Should such a device ever be successful, it could open the floodgates to somebody like Google to release cheap tablets packed with ads everywhere but the core experience.

Via NYT