This study has been debunked. It was paid for by an environmentalist group and the people behind the study used a faulty methodology to get the results that they wanted.
Pilom is right. Your life would become revolved around food.
You should check out the following three things:
Emergency by Neil Strauss in which Neil detail his experiences in trying to become more self sufficient and gaining the abilities to escape from the system
Island to Oneself by Tom Neale for a first hand account of trying to survive on a deserted island for 16 years.
And Survivalistboards.com, which is full of conspiracy nuts but has lots of information about becoming more self sufficient.
1. Estimates of units sold for both the iPad and the Kindle range from 3-5 million.
2. Even with competition from Apple, Barnes and Noble, and others Amazon still holds 90% of the ebook market share.
3. Publisher Author J. A. Konrath reported that on the iBookstore he sales 100 books per month. On the Kindle store he sales 200 books per day.
4. Kindle is not just the physical device. You can read Kindle books on the iPad through the Kindle App. Kindle is also on Android and Windows and everything else that you could possible want to read an ebook on. This means that even if the iPad or an Android
5. The production of the Kindle and price Amazon must purchase the ebooks from their publishers must be taken into account. Let’s assume the Kindle Reader only costs Amazon $150 to produce and that for each $10 book sold they have to give the publishers $7.
19 x $7 = $133 in ebook costs + $150 for the Kindle = $283 in total that Amazon would spend on giving away the Kindle. $283 – $189 the customer pays = $94.
Amazon would go from making $39 on each Kindle Unit to losing $94. If you factor in the lose sales of 19 books x $3 Amazon gets for selling the book then Amazon is losing out on another $57 in revenue for a total of $96 in lost revenue by your brilliant idea. $96 in lost revenue + $94 from the unit sold = Amazon would be making $190 less by giving it away for free than they would by still selling it.
6. Oh yeah, Amazon already gives away over 1.8 million out of print books for free.