Baby Got Books

Amazon’s Kindle

Over the weekend I read through a Newsweek article about Amazon’s new e-book reader, the Kindle. The article reads like an ad for the device without much in the way of hard questions about the new gizmo. Lo and behold, the Kindle showed up on Amazon’s web site yesterday, and it’s ready for shipping.

If you read this blog, however infrequently, you are the target audience for what is being hailed as “the iPod for books.” I’m unconvinced, but I’m interested in hearing what other people think.

Here are my scattered thoughts on the Kindle:

First impression: I hate the name.

Second impression: It’s $399. Have they lost their minds?

A few items of interest that come from the Newsweek article:

Here’s a deal breaker for me:

Bezos explains that it’s only fair to charge less for e-books because you can’t give them as gifts, and due to restrictive antipiracy software, you can’t lend them out or resell them.

Saddling the e-books with digital rights management (DRM) means that you won’t be able to use the books that you’ve purchased however you like. That sucks. It didn’t work for the music industry. Amazon knew this and is now selling DRM-free music files for download in a direct challenge to iTunes. In addition, you won’t be able to read Kindle books on your Sony e-book reader and vice-versa. Why does Amazon think that this broken-by-design approach will work with books? Unfortunately Newsweek doesn’t ask.

I don’t know what to make of this:

The Kindle is not just for books. Via the Amazon store, you can subscribe to newspapers (the Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Le Monde) and magazines (The Atlantic). When issues go to press, the virtual publications are automatically beamed into your Kindle. (It’s much closer to a virtual newsboy tossing the publication on your doorstep than accessing the contents a piece at a time on the Web.) You can also subscribe to selected blogs, which cost either 99 cents or $1.99 a month per blog.

Why would you pay any money to subscribe to a blog? Is this an idiot tax for people who are too lazy to figure out how to use Google Reader? The article doesn’t mention the costs of the newspapers, which are all available for free online, too (with the exception of the WSJ which will be free soon enough). What am I missing here?

The Newsweek article also makes some fairly ridiculous statements, such as the following:

“Michael Chabon will have to rethink how he writes for this medium,” he says. Brantley envisions wiki-style collaborations where the author, instead of being the sole authority, is a “superuser,” the lead wolf of a creative pack.

Hey! No need to drag Chabon into this. The article also throws out this bizarre expert reference:

“Book clubs could meet inside of a book,” says Bob Stein, a pioneer of digital media who now heads the Institute for the Future of the Book, a foundation-funded organization based in his Brooklyn, N.Y., town house.

For bonus points, the article also references the assistant director of the Institute. How do I get to start a “foundation-funded” Institute with my buddies that’s run out of my townhouse?

Boing-Boing’s new gadget blog took the Kimble for a test drive. Their findings:

You can not read PDF files at all. That stinks.
You have to jump through some hoops to read other types of files.
Access to the web appears to be free, but you can pay to subscribe to blogs (pay for RSS?)
“Too Expensive”
“Feels like my first iPod”

On the plus side, the device will have always on wireless internet (based on cell phone technology not WiFi) at no additional cost, i.e. no usage fees or monthly bills. If you can access e-mail and surf the web how you like, it might actually be worth the cost on that basis alone. I suspect that it will ship with very limited internet access. We’ll see.

What it will take to get me into a Kindle:

No DRM on e-book files. None. Even better, create a Shelfari-style Kindle social networking site accessible from my Kimble where I can loan books off of my shelf to my friends.
Drop the price about $300
Complete access to the web. For free.
Support all document formats
Let me easily buy books from other vendors
Set me up in a foundation-funded Institute-type employment situation

Believe me, I’m no Luddite. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on an iPod. The “iPod for books” seems to have a few major obstacles to overcome before I even think about it. Given the recent iPhone price drop fiasco, why would you even want to be the first kid on your block to buy one?

I’m interested to hear what your initial thoughts are. Is anyone actually thinking about buying one of these?

Additional reading on the Kindle:

The Guardian

New York Times

Gizmodo – “Inside the Kindle is the Oxford American Dictionary, but you can only look up words that you run across while reading—you can’t just type them in.”

Wall Street Journal

Tags: Amazon Kindle

Books | Tim | November 20, 2007 8:19 am

7 Comments

By Herman Glimscher, November 20, 2007 @ 10:18 am

Okay, first of all, Shay-bone!

Second, I think the analogy with the iPod is inapt. The beauty of the iPod (and I admit to having come to that particular party late) is that you can listen to your music while walking or running or exercising in some manner or other. By removing the CD or tape component, it made those listening experiences more reliable and easier. When would having Kindle be easier than having a book? The answer is simple. Never.

Listening to music has always been a one sense aesthetic. Reading, however, involves sight, sound, touch, and even, on occasion, smell. Books are durable, portable, and can be searched with a flip of the thumb.

Charging for blog subscriptions is idiocy, but remember what H.L. Mencken said: “Nobody ever went broke from underestimating the American public.”

And, as far as writers participating in “wiki-style collaborations where the author, instead of being the sole authority, is a ‘superuser,’ the lead wolf of a creative pack,” goes, these are the same things that were said about the CD back in the early ’90s, and it never developed. The whole point of being entertained is that the reader/audience member doesn’t have to do the work. Also, the role of the artist in our society is similar to the role of the shaman in other societies. People don’t go to shaman to interact; they go to absorb.

Electrifying something doesn’t always make it better. And, as long as I can drop my book off a balcony and find it still working when I retrieve it, the book will be superior to its electronic brethren.
By Tim, November 20, 2007 @ 10:31 am

It might have been nice to have one of these in college with all of your text books loaded on it. That would have saved about 900 pounds in your back pack.

I also like the idea of being able to annotate and look things up in the OED and WikiPedia.

I’m sticking to the books for now.
By Lillian, November 20, 2007 @ 2:25 pm

I can’t get past the name. Kindle? {{{shudder}}}

Spend your $400 on the XO Laptop program…
Give 1, Get 1

Now that is good use of technology.
By Lillian, November 20, 2007 @ 2:26 pm

Oh, forgot to mention that the Give 1, Get 1 laptop dealio ends on Monday the 26th.
By Tim, November 20, 2007 @ 3:14 pm

Thanks for the reminder, Lillian.

I checked out the link. $200 of your $400 is tax deductible. From the description of the XO laptop:

Thanks to its flexible design and “transformer” hinge, it can easily configure from a standard laptop to an e-book reader and a hand-held video game player.

For half the money, you get a fully functional laptop with free T-Mobile hotspot access (1 yr) that also works as an e-book reader. It won’t read Amazon’s proprietary e-book files though.
By flavawheel, November 20, 2007 @ 7:22 pm

Well, I think it has the advantage that any e-reader has, in that you can take 20 books with you on vacation, but only have to carry something that’s the weight and size of a deck of cards.

That said, Amazon is shooting itself in the foot with their restrictions. Talk about Luddite; haven’t they learned anything from the music industry or their own Internet business? They seem to think people will accept buying proprietary, constrained files to as the price of admission for their reader; I suspect the reality is people will avoid their reader in droves and use another devices to read less restrictive files — they’re certainly not the only game in town.

Plus, they seem to want to make this thing as non-versatile as possible. So in a world where technology is making every device more versatile and user-friendly, Amazon is introducing a $400 one-use block of near obsolesence, and that one use has strings attached — and costs you. Brilliant.

In the next year or two, when the next generation of $99, 100-function cell phones will let you download any book you want for free and then, who knows, broadcast it to your car radio or something, the Kindle (seriously, Kindle?) will seem like a GREAT idea.

So I’ll pass.
By Dr J, November 20, 2007 @ 11:41 pm

I’m trying to imagine what sort of doofus would ever buy one of these in a million years.
I can at least understand in theory why somebody might buy 200 books and carry them around in this stone tablet-looking doohickey. But a newspaper and a blog and the ATLANTIC MONTHLY?!
What am I missing?
Incidentally, I learned about the Kindle this morning thusly: “What the *&#$ is a Kindle?!” my colleague across the hall bellowed. He had gone onto amazon to look at his sales ranking (yes, we all do it) and found his book for sale on kindle.
If you’re thinking that his publisher proactively told him, “Oh, by the way, we’re going to let amazon sell your $19.95 book for $9.95 as an electronic copy,” you’re wrong.