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Is it the greatest rock and roll swindle? No, I don’t think so, but it made a nice headline.
I have to start off with a disclosure - I’ve read very little about the Kindle; next to nothing in fact. Dave Winer twittered a link to Become a Kindle Author on Crave and Cliff Gerrish twittered his post, a great “what if” around it, and John Gruber twittered a link to this post on Daring Fireball and I watched the videos and executive interviews at Amazon’s product page. One person on twitter even quipped “I hear there’s a hack coming out that will let you run old Pippin @World software on the Kindle”; OK, that was me.
So I guess I’ve read a couple things. I just can’t buy into it. As much as I’d like to, I think it’s going to let the shareholders down in fairly epic proportions. First off, the name of the product sounds like it’s going to start a fire like ones tyrants and despots throughout history have used to burn books; not a nice connotation.
Admittedly, I’m a bit of a book freak. Amazon is by far my most visited site. I’d say I go there almost every day and I buy a couple books a week. I own books that are family heirlooms, I have fiction and non-fiction which can’t be sold for enough to cover postage, and I’ve spent way to much over the years on expensive computer books that go out of date before I’m done with them. I sell my used books on Amazon and keep the money in their Gift Certificates to “reinvest” in more books, CDs or DVDs (usually guitar instruction DVDs). Pictured here are a couple photos of my unruly bookshelves, disheveled because I’m really trying to cull through and sell some more.
I also have a penchant for the tactile. Cliff (who also just posted his perceptive take on Kindle) and I frequently trade links to sites about pencils. Yes, Pencils. Pencil sharpeners too. Sad, I know. In fact, one of my favorite books “Thinking with a Pencil” is prominently displayed in the photo to the right, and I currently covet “Sketching the User Experience” - guess I’ll have to sell a few books over at Amazon.
So, why no dice on the Kindle, besides the unfortunate name? For some books, I’m sure it’s fine - New computer manuals, yeah, maybe. They could have taken that a lot further if the author could designate segments to be beamable and equip it with infrared , so you could beam code snipits to your computer. Business titles, one’s you really don’t need to keep. Yeah, maybe, but most of them are so boring I tend to get them at Audible. Businesses could also use it for training or on-boarding as it matures. For fiction? maybe for someone, but not me. For classics? Nada - I just don’t see myself reading Sherlock Holmes on a we computer screen.
One pro, is it uses SD cards; so does my Treo and my Elf, so that would work. Fragility. Books are pretty durable, and they have to be; they get tossed around, say on, slept on. etc. and, the price tag… $399? over an iPhone, well, that toy’s gonna have to wait. I’d rather wake up Christmas morning to find a Chumby, by far.
November 20th, 2007 at 1:27 am
Thanks for pointing me to my own bookmarks on pencils. I collect the bookmarks when I run across them, but sometimes it takes someone else to show me what I’ve collected. I collect pencils, but only to use them.
I can only think with so many people thinking that Kindle will fail that it’s bound to succeed. Although it’s hard to imagine how. How does the fragile expensive high tech gadget disrupt the simple cheap book? If the sequence were reversed, I could see the book disrupting the e-book. The codex disrupts the code.
November 20th, 2007 at 4:14 am
I think the failure of previous attempts to launch this type of product, Sony comes to mind, is largely down to publishers refusing to grant licences.
The range of books available in e-format is very small as publishers are too concerned about protecting their profit. It reminds me of the music industry which initially saw Internet downloads as a similiar type of threat.
If publishers embraced this method of access to books there would be no shortage of takers. Books take up a lot of space and are heavy making transportation and storage costs high. In Europe where there is a lot of concern over carbon footprint and the need to reduce environmental impact this type of product could help.
Product price is also an issue but perhaps this could be reduced as volumes increase.