Kindle: Incredible Reading Tool, Evil Book-Killer, or Overpriced Technology?
- By Renee Roberts
Amazon's Whispernet easily connects to the Kindle store.
by Renée Magriel Roberts
So, what currently has several issues of the New York Times Tuesday science edition, American Creation by Joseph J. Ellis, samples pages of Atonement by Ian McEwan and Michael Moore's Official Fahrenheit 9/11 Reader, Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns and John McPhee's Founding Fish, as well as the Messages and Papers of George Washington, Barack Obama's Audacity of Hope, Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma, and the Tuesday, February 5 issue of The Wall Street Journal?
Well that's currently what's on my Kindle, of course, Amazon's pretty amazing 10.3 oz. electronic paper reader. Fitting handily in my purse, the Kindle can hold around 200 titles with unlimited storage on Amazon's servers for other books and periodicals that I purchase. After waiting over a month for mine, my Kindle finally arrived in its own leatherette case, complete with paper manual, and cables for uploading files to my computer, as well as recharging its battery.
With Amazon's utter dominance of the on-line book market, this introduction of its own branded reading device is causing a lot of concern. Consider, for example, that the Kindle is sold only by Amazon; the files that Kindle takes are not open-source and so the books and other ephemera sold for the device also have to be sold by Amazon. This pretty much cuts out booksellers and publishers who do not wish to publish to the device.
One typical complaint was recently lodged by Jason Epstein, co-founder of On Demand Books in the April 2008 issue of M.I.T.'s "Technology Review." His main complaint, and an entirely valid one, is the price. At a hefty $400, the first book purchased for the Kindle at $10 will effectively cost $410; the first 20 books a reader buys will cost $30 each; the first 40, $20 each and so on. But, of course, this does not factor in other features of the Kindle.
For example, you can download on demand, anytime and just about anywhere. Using a high-performance cellular network, the Kindle can find Amazon's servers even when my AT&T cell phone cannot. While we have to go outside to make a cell call, I can sit on my sofa and download a book or current newspaper to my Kindle. Downloading a 200-page book takes less than a minute.
From an ergonomic point of view, the Kindle is really quite pleasurable to use (my husband does complain that his thick fingers don't work so well on the little keyboard). The electronic paper is easy on the eyes and I really like the feature that allows you to create your own font size. Moreover, the Kindle does not require a computer and has its own Amazon (and its own limited Web-based connection), so the learning curve is not very steep.
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Kindle: Incredible Reading Tool, Evil Book-Killer, or Overpriced Technology?
- By Renee Roberts
The electronic paper screen is easy to read.
There are currently over 100,000 books available for the Kindle, including most on the New York Times bestseller list. But you don't have to buy a book to check it out; the Kindle will download around 15 pp. from the beginning of the book for free and if you like it, you can then download the full text. If not, nothing lost.
Similarly, there are free newspaper subscriptions for the first month, automatically downloaded to the device. Subscriptions are also available from a selected number of international newspapers as well.
If you have files in MS Word (as well as images in standard file formats) you can upload them to Amazon from your computer and for a small fee, they will convert them to Kindle format for your device.
Kindle material is full-text searchable and you can go directly to specific articles or chapters using hyperlinks. Whenever you leave a book or magazine, Kindle keeps track of where you are in the text so that the next time you open up the file you are right where you left off. You can also mark the text and create blocks of material that are both noted and annotated and can eventually be uploaded to your computer.
For those interested in online blogs, subscriptions to some of these can also be created and automatically downloaded to the Kindle. If you are interested in publishing, you can easily create a file in Word or Adobe, send it to Amazon to Kindle-ize it, and then publish it to Amazon's Kindle store. This seems like a huge opportunity for legitimate publishing as well as pure trash.
From a reader's perspective, I find the screen very easy on the eyes, non-glare even in direct sunlight. If 200 titles directly on the Kindle do not suffice, inexpensive add-on memory is available.
I can readily see the Kindle in the hands of a student: instead of having to lug hundreds of pounds of books around, it is going to be a heck of a lot easier putting this small device in a backpack. It's also a real plus for people whose eyes are not what they used to be because no special editions of books are needed -- you can buy books at whatever size font and then use the device to enlarge the fonts to make them most comfortable.
Unlike a wireless computer, you do not have to locate a hot spot, as Amazon's Whispernet seems more than capable of sending and receiving wherever. And did I mention that there is no extra charge for accessing this network: access "comes with" the purchase of the device, as does unlimited storage for your purchases on Amazon's servers.
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Kindle: Incredible Reading Tool, Evil Book-Killer, or Overpriced Technology?
- By Renee Roberts
At 10.3 oz. the Kindle can easily fit into a backpack.
You can always download your Kindle files to your computer; while they can't be read from the computer, the computer's storage can be used when you are out of the country, as Whispernet only works domestically.
So, is the Kindle an incredible reading tool? I think it is. Will it replace books? To some extent. It is certainly a very attractive way to carry around and access large amounts of content. Will it hurt conventional publishers? Only if they are not agile enough to adapt. Copyrighted content is still copyrighted content, and this is an interesting and potentially powerful delivery system.
Will it hurt the rare book market? Only to the extent that people are looking for content rather than the physical book itself. Google is already affecting that part of our industry through its extensive digitizing.
Is it overpriced? Maybe not, when you consider the convenience and the free connectivity. Even at the $400 price, Amazon is continuously sold out, but promises to bring up its manufacturing shortly to meet demand.
One should also mention the device's low carbon footprint. No trees taken down to produce these "paper" products and no delivery "cost."
So, tonight I'll probably get back to my Ellis book, which I'm finding very enjoyable, and check out yesterday's science articles on The New York Times. On my Kindle.
Renée Magriel Roberts can be reached at renee@roses-books.com.
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