Survey reveals Kindle readers aren't buying Amazon's pricey page-turning solution

Physical page-turn buttons might seem like a pretty basic feature for an e-reader, but Amazon has spent years leaving them off its Kindle lineup. The company has given bookworms a way to bring them back with its latest devices, although it’s charging a hefty premium for the privilege. We recently asked readers whether they’d be willing to pay $80 for this convenience, and the results suggest Amazon might have misread the room.

As my colleague Dhruv Bhutani explained in his recent look at the 2026 Kindle refresh, Amazon’s new Page-Turn Cover adds physical buttons to the e-reader through a magnetic connection. The catch is that it costs $80 and it only works with the Signature Editions of the Kindle Paperwhite and Colorsoft, which already cost $250 and $320, respectively. That makes $330 the minimum entry price if you want physical buttons on a new Kindle. We wanted to know whether you thought this was fair enough, or if perhaps Amazon should have just included this functionality as part of the deal.

The results were both emphatic and entirely unsurprising. Of the 2,844 votes cast, a whopping 72% of respondents felt that page-turn buttons should be built into the Kindle hardware rather than sold as an accessory. Just 9% liked the idea of having an extra option, while another 8% would consider paying for the cover if it worked with more affordable Kindles. The remaining 11% said they’d switched to Kobo, suggesting Amazon has already lost some readers to its rival.

If there is anything surprising about the results, it’s maybe that almost one in ten readers would pay that much for the functionality. However, even if accurate, Amazon is unlikely to care — market research will have informed these prices. I might broadly agree with the 72%, but that just means this accessory isn’t for me. It’s for buyers of the pricier Kindles that are already well beyond what you need to read your eBooks. These people may have the funds to worry less about budgeting and be willing to pay a premium for their reading experience.

And while I’m not defending Amazon’s choices, the way our poll was phrased didn’t do the company any favors. We asked whether you would “pay an extra $80 for an accessory that adds page-turn buttons to a Kindle,” and the question appeared at the top of Dhruv’s article before the section explaining the accessory. That makes it sound like a clicker, but it’s actually a rather fetching cover made of plant-based leather, and the physical page-turn buttons are a nice feature of that. I still wouldn’t pay for it, but perhaps it’s not (quite) as overpriced as the question might suggest.

Of course, I’m sure plenty of the 72% believe $5 would be too much extra to pay for physical page-turn buttons, but whether all Kindles should have physical buttons as standard is a debate for another day.

The comments on Dhruv’s article largely echoed the poll results, with Jacobtmurphy questioning why anyone would pay another $80 for buttons on an already expensive Kindle when the older Oasis had them built in. Fellow commenter Sergevanneck is still happily using a 2019 Oasis and plans to switch to Boox when it eventually gives up the ghost. There was at least one enthusiastic buyer, though. Reader Brymasters01 had already preordered the accessory for their Colorsoft but raised concerns about its water resistance, particularly since they enjoy reading in the bath.