Amazon’s Kindle: The Future of eReading?
Kind eReader,
At long last, after over a year of speculation, on November 19 Amazon released its proprietary ebook reader, the Kindle. Their aspiration is that it will redefine reading and finally accomplish what no one else has quite managed: making ebooks accepted as a truly viable entertainment medium.
Well, you have to admire Amazon for aiming high. And they have done their research and taken a bold new approach: created a device that uses cell phone technology for constant web conductivity so book shopping, downloading, and reading can all occur independently of any other equipment (i.e., you don’t need a computer). Personally, I love the idea of being able to use an ereader also for (albeit limited) web browsing without any monthly fee. All I know is, I totally missed Wikipedia during our spring road trip.
Well, in a couple of weeks, the Kindle completely sold out of stock. And the machine is getting more positive reviews than negative regarding its ereading function. Most people find the E Ink technology very easy to read, appreciate being able to read it in bright sun, and like the scalability of fonts. Most find it simple to use and like the paging buttons.
There are quite a few complaints too, of course. First and foremost, the $400 price tag is daunting, and on that I agree. I recognize though that Amazon must pay for the mobile broadband connection (outsourced to Sprint) for the life of every machine it sells. There’s also a lot of whining about the prices of Kindle ebooks, but I find them comparable to ebook prices of the past (my own titles are very inexpensive), with the exception of big bestsellers, which are typically offered for $10 each. People also gripe about the fees Amazon charges for electronic newspaper, magazine and blog subscriptions, but I say, if you don’t like the prices, don’t subscribe. And lastly among the big objections, Kindles only read their own format. Other formats can be converted, either by paying a ten cent fee per document, or by a rather complicated workaround. But the long and short of it is, don’t expect easy access to pdf documents.
I am hoping there will be a bit of a price drop, and since that’s how electronics work, I expect one. I’m also looking forward to the improvements Amazon is already developing, like Kindles with full color ink. But if I had $400 to blow, I wouldn’t hesitate to buy one. Obviously reading on a Kindle’s paperback-page-sized screen would be a joy compared to reading on my little iPaq. And it weighs only 10 ounces!
What encourages me most about the launch of the Kindle is the marketing juggernaut that is Amazon. However long it took them to work out the kinks and get their product released, they have done it with a bang. A huge cover story in Newsweek, top billing on every technology blog and ezine, celebrity endorsements, and the simultaneous release of 90,000 titles (including eight of mine)…mad props to them for all this, when in fact just the big splash on the home page of the Amazon site is going to be in the face of millions of people each day.
I did my part on Kindle Launch Monday and updated my websites with bold links to my Kindle Edition books and a few other promotional tweaks. Frankly, it’s exciting to finally see the payoff for all the work it took me to release my titles in Mobipocket months ago. For those of you wondering just how books made it to the “shelves” of the Kindle Store, all Mobi titles were automatically converted and included in Amazon’s catalog. They also now offer to publishers and authors a service called Digital Text Platform, by which Mobipocket can be bypassed and content uploaded (in html format) to Amazon for conversion to Kindle. Anyone with an Amazon account can set up books this way and sell them for a 35% cut, not too bad.
Which means Amazon is returning to its old philosophy, the more content the better. As long as they lead in selection (which they clearly do), they are already the place to find ebooks. Now it’s just a matter of convincing the public to cough up the $400 ticket to get on their ebook train.
How will that go long term? Your guess is as good as mine. These next months…and years…should be fascinating. But then, the Life of e always is….
eRead on,
Diana
Filed Under:
|
About the Book:
|