Love it or hate it, Amazon.com’s Kindle e-book reader is selling well — in fact, even at $359 there currently aren’t any in stock. So Amazon certainly doesn’t need any advice from me about how to sell more Kindles, but I have some ideas about how the company could make the device more attractive to casual readers like me.
The basic idea would be to make the Kindle reach critical mass as a consumer product, similar to how many “average” people own an iPod. Whether iPod owners use it or appreciate it isn’t as important as the fact that they bought an iPod because it’s become the de facto standard for portable music playback.
Granted, e-book readers are a harder sell than portable music players as almost everyone consumes music in someway or another but not everyone regularly reads books for pleasure. Still, the idea isn’t to make the Kindle as popular as the iPod, it’s to make the Kindle the iPod of e-book readers.
No changes to current hardware
My prescription for selling more Kindles to regular people doesn’t involve anything drastic like changing the hardware. It can be implemented easily and instantly. Plenty of pundits would argue that the device is in need of a hardware overhaul – and maybe it is – but let’s work with what we currently have. My plan makes upgrading to newer models enticing for current Kindle owners, too.
It’s way too expensive for casual readers
I consider myself a casual reader in that I read about ten books per year. Assuming I’d buy all my e-books at ten bucks a pop, it’d cost me over $350 to just get into a Kindle at first, plus another $100 scattered throughout the year. Psychologically, that initial $350+ purchase price is what keeps me away. I keep telling myself that I could buy ten books at the bookstore for less than half that price.
For me, as a technology enthusiast, the EVDO data connection is THE killer feature that the Kindle has going for it, but it’s not enough to persuade me to spend almost $359 plus $10 per book on a device that I’m going to use ten times each year.
That data connection is, beyond a doubt, the reason for the Kindle’s high price tag. Amazon has to pay Sprint something for access to its data network and that cost is passed along to the consumer. While some have mused that some sort of subscription to the data access could subsidize the cost of the Kindle, Amazon knows that keeping things as simple as possible is in everyone’s best interest. You don’t buy the Kindle through Amazon and then deal with Sprint, you buy the Kindle and use it without worrying about how those books are getting sent wirelessly to your device.
How to overcome the price obstacle
Here’s how to keep current Kindle-lovers happy while making the device accessible to less avid readers. This model draws from a model previously used by Audible.com to sell subscriptions to its audiobook service. Back when MP3 players were starting to grow in popularity but were still pretty expensive, Audible used to subsidize certain players against automatic monthly audiobook purchases. You could sign up to certain tiers (one, two, or three books per month, for instance) and the higher the tier you signed up for, the cheaper your MP3 player would cost.
So for Amazon, here’s what I’d suggest:
1. Keep selling the Kindle for $359, straight-up, just like it’s being sold now. No fuss, no muss, nobody gets bent out of shape. People can buy the Kindle and then spend as little or as much on e-books as they see fit.
2. Sell the Kindle for $249 with an automatic $15 monthly book credit for one year.
While most books cost under $15, it’s hard to get two books for that price. Not wanting to waste book credits, people might be persuaded to purchase a second book or a subscription to something every month using the remainder of their monthly credit, plus regular money to make up the difference. That, or Amazon would keep the extra $5 or whatever wasn’t spent ($15 for forgetful users).
Buying the Kindle wouldn’t sting as much at first for consumers and Amazon would end up taking in at least $429, minus whatever it pays out for royalties.
3. Sell the Kindle for $49 with an automatic $30 monthly book credit for one year.
This would work for avid readers who don’t want to outlay $359 up front for the device plus it’d entice people like me to get into a Kindle for dirt cheap, load up on books for the first year, and then spend the next year or two reading them.
Amazon would take in a total of $409, minus royalties, and $30 is easier for consumers to use up on three best sellers each month without going over.
Hardware upgrades
The monthly credit model would also entice first-generation Kindle owners to upgrade to subsequent Kindle devices. Instead of saying, “I paid $400 for the first one – I’m not paying another $400 for the new one” they might say, “I paid $400 for the first one and spent roughly $30 a month on books, so maybe I’ll pick the new one up for $49 and sign up for the $30-per-month plan.”
Possible obstacles
The biggest factor for Amazon would be whether or not a system like this would be profitable given the amount of money it has to pay to authors for each book sold. A cursory search on e-book royalties seems to peg the figure at between 15% and 25% to the authors/publishers for each book sold.
If that’s true, Amazon would only be eating a couple bucks on each book sold — and we’re assuming nobody forgets to use up their credit for the first year — but the Kindle would be in the hands of so many more people, which is the whole idea.
Agree? Disagree? Your thoughts?
I don’t understand why someone who reads only ten books per year would pay any price for a Kindle; the library is free and doesn’t require batteries.
Because that one copy of Nancy Drew is looking pretty worn out and has a few pages missing. Grow up Constance TV. Especially in the non-fiction dept., by the time a book makes it to the library, it’s old hat and sometimes even irrelevant. Kind of like your Windows 98 OS.
Actually, the iPod is the iPod of e-book readers – an iPod Touch or an iPhone is just as flexible as a Kindle, and a lot more portable to boot.
An iPod dosen’t have a free wireless connection, especially one that dosen’t need Wifi hotspot to work.
The screen is a small fraction of the size of an e-book reader.
The battery lasts much longer since the screen on an e-book reader only needs power to change it’s image, not to keep the image on-screen like an LCD or OLED screen.
No. No eInk, tiny screen, no killer battery life.
“…an iPod Touch or an iPhone is just as flexible as a Kindle, and a lot more portable to boot.”
I own an iPhone and a Kindle. I’ve had my iPhone for over a year and the Kindle for about a month. The iPhone has been a continual frustrating when it comes to trying to read anything more than a few paragraphs long. The screen is tiny and my choices are either to squint when I try to read text or zoom in and constantly have to scroll through the text while reading. This does not make the device remotely easy to work with. Actually, now that I think about it, I’ve used my Kindle more in the past month than I have used my iPhone in the past year.
The Kindle on the other hand, has gotten me to read (longer texts, that is) more in the past month that I have in the last several years combined. I finally finished the same book I’ve been reading for the past four years because I can easily carry my Kindle around wherever I go (reading on the bus everyday has never been easier for me). Yes, the Kindle is about twice as heavy as the iPhone, but the iPhone is really small compared to the Kindle. Psychologically, the iPhone feels much much heavier compared to the Kindle due to its size. As for being convenient, the Kindle fits fine in my jacket pocket. I don’t notice me carrying it anymore.
Of course, the Kindle has some other flaws with it, like the placement of the buttons, and the general look of the device, but it’s been really enjoyable so far. And I’ve read far more than I have in years, so I’m really happy with my decision to buy it.
Why its still expensive?
The iPod Touch and iPhone can display ebooks, but don’t have the ease and simplicity of purchase built into them. They also don’t have as large a screen as the Kindle. My wife has a Kindle. We both own iPod Touches. The difference is obvious.
Doug’s ideas are reasonable, but I’m not sure the Kindle’s current form is what will appeal to the greater consumer market even if the price goes lower. My wife will carry hers in her purse, but I’m not interested until they figure out how to get the same sized screen into a package that will fit in my shirt pocket. Unreasonable? Samsung is on the right track: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2SCZvU8sGU
4D
They should be sold for what they are worth – but they aren’t worth anything.
My position on this has allays been the same you want to sell me something so that I can have the privilege of buying more stuff from you, then go screw. You want to provide me a tool to use my own content (mp3’s for example) then there is something to talk about. You want to give me a platform to sell me stuff, I might be very mildly interested. You want provide a too/platform for both I might be a little more interested. This akin to everyone trying to me too a box to sell me video, fuck no (nor dose giving away crap and then having a ton of premium tears count).
You realize by that logic, you put videogame consoles and cellphones under the same category as e-book readers since they are trying to “sell me something so that I can have the privilege of buying more stuff from you.”
Especially consoles that exsisted before internet connections for them were common.
Personally, I don’t want the kindle to succeed. I want to see a dozen other devices on the market, competition in both features and price, and competition will derive the best market method for this content.
Likewise I want to see an open standard for these books and whatever drm they are going to require, so that I can buy books from everyone for the same device. And I want to see the FTC or similar get involved to force these companies to work with libraries so that they can loan out texts for fixed periods, like real books.
But I live in a dream world full of unicorns and gumdrops, so don’t get your hopes up. Here’s hoping that amazon doesn’t build a monopoly on etexts…
Great suggestion, Dave. An e-book library would be lovely for avid readers, although I’m thinking about how late charges would enter the equation. Library memberships are free, yet late charges obviously aren’t. Perhaps the e-book library of the future can make money in the same way the real library does, the more you wish to keep the book, the more you pay and at some point, they charge you the full price of the book.
With the music industry heading in new directions these days, perhaps e-books could do the same, in that services, such as that which Amazon.com provides, use the library method I mentioned above (much in the same way the music industry has taken to streaming full tracks and CDs).
One thing the author of this article didn’t mention here, but which has been proposed by TC before, is allowing the Kindle’s hardware to be tinkered with, while the software remains property of Amazon. The Windows method, basically.
For me personally, aside from buying books in my own language (English), I’d like a larger selection of foreign language fiction and non-fiction books on Amazon, assuming they become the go-to place for e-books.
All in all, I won’t be coming around any time soon to purchase the Kindle at its current price and in its current form. By form, I mean its hardware and the electronic method of reading, for which I only prefer for the computer. Real books are still preferable.
Lets see if competition is allowed, as the results would be interesting.
You think libraries make their money on late fees?
It’s all subsidized.
I’d like to see a form of e-books that are shareable and can only be on one device at a time. Until then it’s not worth giving up real books that you can borrow from friends or lend to friends.
I’d like to see the Kindle become an open platform for content from multiple providers. I understand Amazon’s motivation for locking it down (they created it, after all). But as a consumer, I feel like I’m paying a premium just for the privilege of being their customer. Like, the Kindle isn’t really mine – it’s more like the cable box in my living room.
The kindle would need to become a worldwide phenomenon and that is never going to happen when it is tied to an America only wireless network.
Yes, and I’m sure international copyright and billing issues present pretty big challenges, too.
They just need to ram through 100% adoption amongst freshmen at a few top-tier colleges, have ALL the textbooks/readings online, at reasonable prices, and maybe add some way for students to share/compare notes or work collaboratively on papers/projects/etc.
eBooks are just approaching the market all wrong trying to go consumer-first. Once the first or second class of eBookers graduated, everyone else would basically HAVE to fall in line, just to keep up with the young and hungry.
The iPod example is often misused in this light – it’s not that Apple hit the right featureset in a player to explode adoption amongst the general consumer. It’s that Apple cracked the code for “how to SELL music online”, and then ruthlessly pushed through adoption amongst its OWN FAITHFUL, not the average consumer. You take a time machine back, and 95% of the world laughed at people with iPods as Apple fanboys, because their new Creative player or whatever had FM radio on it. And, to some extent, it was correct – there was a highly charged minority, who all adopted the change, showed the benefits to everyone, and THAT spurred general adoption.
There are two HUGE differences between the iPod and Kindle.
1) a song takes 3-4minutes to listen to, a book takes 3-4 days to read (at a normal pace)
2) ipods with 32gb’s of storage space? if the average song is 5mb, thats 6,400 songs. A song on iTunes costs $0.99 so thats over $6,000 to fill one of these. Point is, most people pirate or, more leagally, copy from their own cds.
Point is, I don’t want to purchase more books, and be limited to the books available in the kindle catalog, I want to be able to scan the books I already have.
The importance of the Kindle to me is the form, an ‘infinite’ amount of books (via downloads and mem-cards) in less space and weight than one book, vs an entire library.
Book Scanners…. not until someone releases an affordable, easy-to-use, consumer-based book scanner, will these things take off. And it needs good OCR (optical character recognition).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlOQuuLYavY
Try having them in stock for the holidays. My wife was all set to buy me one for Xmas and there are none to be had. Eleven to thirteen weeks delivery time. This is crazy. Don’t they want to sell these?
I would never buy a device that expensive that can only read ebooks, my laptop can do that and a lot more and it costs around $500 dollars, another thing for me is the size of the device, why would I carry that when I can download an audio book for free from http://www.mp3audioplayers.net and listen to it on the plane, I mean come on my mp3 player is tiny, I honestly do not believe that they are really selling any of these devices, I travel a lot and I have not seen 1 person use the Kindle.
Clearly, they don’t REALLY need to lower the price at the moment(as it is selling out like crazy as it is). I imagine they’ll lower the price when the novelty wears off, like everything else. Something that WOULD increase the number of Kindles in the hands of the consumer would be targeting the textbook market. I’m more than willing to spend 300+ if I can download all my textbooks in one place for 20-40 dollars each as opposed to spending 150+ on each science textbook in print that I buy now. It would save me a ton of money and I would never forget a book at home! And seriously, lugging around a ton of textbooks gets really old, really fast. I’m assuming they’re already planning on capturing the market share in this area with their new Kindle that is going to be bigger than the current version… what other reason is there to increase its size other than for textbooks?
please stop FORCING crunch gear feeds into the tech crunch stream. I’m sure its a fine blog but its not my cup of tea.
kthxbai
How do you know they are selling well? They always seem to be sold out but has Amazon released any sales figures?
i will buy a kindle when:
1. it has the feel and size of a time or newsweek magazine. a borderless design and some flexibility.
2. i can read formats: .doc .pdf .txt .htm instead of being locked to some cookie format tied to stuff you have to buy – i dont have a kindle so i dont know for sure that you cant, although i do suspect it is.
and if you dont do it amazon, watch someone else do it. i know amazon sees this as a way to sell books, i will buy my books in paper for a while yet because books can be abused, lent and forgotten, but i hate reading stuff on this damn computer screen.
“i can read formats: .doc .pdf .txt .htm instead of being locked to some cookie format tied to stuff you have to buy – i dont have a kindle so i dont know for sure that you cant, although i do suspect it is.”
I’ve had a Kindle for about a month. Just today I converted .pdf and .doc files to the Kindle format (for free) and transferred it to my Kindle. HTML files can be converted as well, although I’ve found some problems trying to get that to work. I’ve heard that .pdf files can be tricky too, but so far I’ve had good luck (it’s only been a few times, mind you). As for .txt files, I downloaded free books from the Project Gutenberg site and transferred them directly to the Kindle without any trouble. Actually, the majority of the stuff I read isn’t from Amazon itself. I find pdf books online that are free or grab stuff from Project Gutenberg and convert them via MobiConverter to the .mobi file format, which is read by the Kindle. I’ve tried sending files to Amazon to convert, but the html files were malformed and it failed to convert for me (argh!). So I’ve started using MobiConverter instead and I’ve had a lot of luck with that.
On a side note, for some reason, I found it very hard to find out that you can convert files to a format that is supported by the Kindle. The only info I had found was to email files to Amazon and have them charge me $.10 to deliver the converted files to the Kindle. This was a major turn-off for me and was pretty much a deal breaker for me (for the first 10 months or so). I found out recently (before buying my Kindle) that you can send the files to Amazon and have them convert files for you for free. The trick is that they send the file back to your email account instead of the Kindle. You have to connect the Kindle to your computer to transfer them over. I guess they are charging for the use of wireless stuff. I was surprised that Amazon supported this type of functionality, but frustrated that it wasn’t advertised more as an option. Especially considering it stopped me from buying Kindle for the past year.
On #2: You actually CAN view these documents on the device – There is not a native PDF reader, but you can covert the docs for the device. I’ve never tried HTML directly though there is a in fact a web browser on the device.
#1: Why would you want something that large? A borderless design so your fingers are in the way of what you’re reading? What flexibility are you missing?
#2: You can send PDF, Microsoft Word (.DOC), HTML, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP and TXT files to your Kindle and have them delivered wirelessly. Or, you can save the .10 fee and side load them yourself.
Kindle + http://www.Instapaper.com = epic win.
I imagine that Kindle customers are also their most profitable when it comes to books – as in, they probably buy more than any other group. Why mess around with your most profitable customer? While I understand the 80/20 rule (spend 80% of your time focused on pleasing the top 20% of your customers), you don’t want to risk upsetting them.
Even if you play with the price, there’s 2 big differences:
First, as somebody else pointed out, the library is free. Avid readers are already getting their books, legally, for free. The whole point of an ebook reader is that you only need one device, which would be perfect for people who go through a lot of books. Unfortunately, until it can hook up to my public library and get everything they have for free, it’s a loss even at $49.
Second, the iPod has the advantage that I can listen to all my old music on it already. Every piece of music I’ve bought in the past *mumblemumble* decades, I can load up on my iPod in no time at all. A new Kindle can only read new things I buy. Even if I could, say, download electronic copies of all the books I’ve ever bought from Amazon, that would be a huge win, but I can’t. The iPod holds the union of all the music I’ve ever bought, while the Kindle would hold a disjoint set of my existing books.
I am an American living in Costa Rica, and one of my biggest gripes are that there aren’t a lot of English books to read down here and the ones that I can find are very expensive (200% of US costs).
So I’d love to use the Kindle. And so would a lot of other Americans and non-Americans alike who would like to be able to buy from the selection Amazon offers.
Here’s why I don’t have one yet:
1) The cellular network is a very nice idea and all and must make the device very interesting… to those in the US. Me, I’d have to sync it by USB cables.
That wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t one of the killer features of the device. If you aren’t in the States you can’t go wireless.
I would be happy with Wi-Fi to sync to, or if they’d allow me to configure it with any GSM network.
In short: portability! They took digital mediums, which are supposed to make the world smaller, and made the whole wireless experience around a proprietary network they made in a business deal with Telcos. If that deal dies you have no way to get your wireless fix somewhere else. If you aren’t in their area of coverage you are out of luck.
Make it more open in terms of connectivity, and a bunch of people around the world would buy it.
2) There’s not enough incentive to go digital. I am a digital fanatic, but there’s a special place in my heart for books. I’d ditch the cumbersome books in a heartbeat for the advantages that come with digital mediums.
But where are they? Amazon only comes through with digital advantages in only the fundamental ways. Sure, it’s less to lug around than how much reading material can be held on it, and yes you can get a book immediately over the internet (and then sync by USB cable in my case) and even with the flaws in connectivity it’s still easier than going to a bookstore.
But what I want is a digital repository of all my reading material. When I browse the web, I can have every page I read made into a searchable database where I can look up and reference anything I’ve seen. I can tag pages and organize information.
That is what Amazon should bundle with this service. I love digital information because searching is faster than an index and page flipping, and because it can be categorized, cited, and used so much more efficiently.
Instead, they’ve gone with the pedestrian e-book standard, replicating a book on a digital screen.
They should offer a service on Amazon that lets you browse your entire digital collection, everything you’ve ever purchased with them.
You should be able to collect clippings from them (with the ability to make them from the kindle), you should be able to tag books and pages. You should be able, in short, to take a bit of advantage of the digital medium. The next generation of e-books shouldn’t just be about the way the book is delivered and how it’s represented on a digital screen.
Let’s have APIs so that others can add their innovations to the service, let’s have collaborative reviewing, cliff notes and commentary available. Let’s have the ability to read in sessions together with others remotely (chat enabled).
And I’m not talking about the kindle here, I’m talking about an Amazon service to go with it. Which is a good idea if they…
3) Open up their proprietary format.
If they provide the services I talked about in #2, they’d not lose my business by doing so and I’d want to buy from them to keep a single library of my reading material, but in the cases where they don’t have something I want to read I want to be able to get it easily elsewhere and I don’t want to build a digital collection from them without knowing I’d be able to take it with me to other readers if I no longer wish to use theirs.
4) Make the pricing more attractive. The digital medium should not be so closely priced to the physical copies, with their printing costs. At the very least, allow for discounts when you’ve purchased a hardcopy version or vice-versa.
Sometimes I would want a physical copy of the book for my library after reading the digital version. I shouldn’t have to pay full price again, and if I’ve purchased a hard copy at full price they should offer a discounted digital copy.
Those are my basic qualms. Pricing is a very small issue, they are already a financially good deal for people like me. They are cheaper than any alternative I have. But I don’t want to build a non-portable collection. Open it up!
Interesting suggestions! I received the Kindle as a gift several months ago. (As an aside, stay in touch and be kind to your former bosses and colleagues. My first boss out of college gave me a Kindle for my birthday!)
I especially like the Kindle when I’m traveling, not only for carrying many books at no extra weight but also downloading the WSJ and NY Times when I’m in rural areas.
I didn’t have an urge to buy the Kindle but now that I have one, I do like it. By the way, I’m a big reader and buyer of books. I find I’m still buying dead-tree books because I like the ability to thumb through reference books quickly.
Why don’t they sell the Kindle without 3G but with Wifi. I would be more than willing to buy one and because Amazon wouldn’t have to pay Sprint or Verizon for lifetime 3G access the price of the device would undoubtedly be much much lower. Maybe $249, I’d buy at that price.
May be adding to list of the countries where its available can be a start.
FYI, on the royalty rate. Amazon has a terms-of-sale type deal, not a royalty-paying license–that’s what all its suppliers are used to. Standard wholesale price is 50% of retail, which is about what it’s going to offer everyone, give or take a few points. Publishers in turn pay royalties to authors, at the moment that’s being contested but is in the 25-30% of net revenue range, with some going as high as 50% though the latter is largely with companies licensing solely electronic rights, as other parties (the print publishers) have already covered the developmental costs…
“Amazon.com’s Kindle e-book reader is selling well…”
You don’t have a single piece of hard fact to support that. I dare you.
How about the fact that they are constantly sold out?
I could make one a month and have it constantly sold out. Not a valid assertion without hard numbers.
At least 240,000 units Kontra — and that data is from back in August.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/01/we-know-how-many-kindles-amazon-has-sold-240000/
If you double dare me, I will absolutely be taking the physical challenge.
Classic reference. I love the tiered payment idea. The price is definitely the obstacle for me. I have a feeling I would purchase one if this were in place.
On the other hand, if it was slime-proof…I would probably pay full price.
I agree we need more facts, plus alot of people dont feel like paying the 30 to 50$ a month when they could just go buy a book or even 2 books for half that a week. Anyway Check out this site on more info on kindle and other Electronics. http://www.squidoo.com/electronics4u
Why does the kindle have to be the next big thing. YOu know what happens to those kinds of items they go right to the bottom of the drawer with the last next big thing after the initial fun goes away. I would like to see slow steady growth and universal adoption of the technology. In order to have this happen you have to make it universal so you probably do need to make it a reasonable price. You have to make it available to as many people as possible. Maybe you can license the technology and make the development open source. If its about monopolizing the entire industry well im sure sony, microsoft google or apple will be more then willing to put their foot in the ring to get a piece of the action. Make it available to students and universities. The price of textbooks for schools is absolutely disgusting. Someone needs to break that monopoly so making these available on the kindle makes alot of sense and lightens the load of students and school budgets. Sorry university bookstores but you have had a good run now its time to move on. Dont ruin the technology. Dont start adding a bunch of garbage to the kindle like mp3 players and cell phones and computer apps. Nobody wants or needs it just make improvements. Do what the japanese do. underpromise and overdeliver. Well hopefully some of these suggestions take hold but like always im sure someone will find a way to wreck a perfect technology and down to the bottom of the drawer it will go. Can you say betamax?
Can you say iPods?
I probably average two books/week, but I have to say the Kindle has no appeal for me whatsoever.
For $359 you can get an ultra-portable laptop computer if you want to carry something around with you about the same size, and I see no reason why ebooks wouldn’t end up being distributed legally or illegally like MP3’s, in pdf format perhaps. I think the Kindle is a dog the functions of which will be incorporated in general purpose computers much as dedicated word processors became a tiny niche.
Libraries are getting more user friendly also. I can now check availability of books and other material online, check my account, put books on hold, renew books–all online. Why screw around with some klutzy piece of electronics?
The format of the Kindle is probably wrong:
Folding screens are the future in order to make the device convenient:
http://www.readius.com/ (Philips related)
The goal is to have your mobile phone to become the reading device: the cell phone is already equipped with a data connection – it just needs a plastic (polymer – oled) fold out screen.
Interesting article.
I would love to agree / disagree with you, but sadly as I live in the UK Amazon have for whatever reason decided to not ship it here.
I imagine its down to the EVDO data connection and our lack of compatible suppliers. However, this leads me onto my next point, by giving the Kindle standard WIFI connectivity they could open up the non US market and sell loads, surely that’s a quicker way to sell more?
I think the more pertinent point is that the publishing industry is missing the very same point that the music industry refuses to come to grips with. Electronic books have a zero carrying costs and have zero production and distribution costs. Why then are they being sold for the same price as a physical book. This is economics 101. Lower the until cost and demand (of the electronic books) will increase. Amazon is well placed but seems enamoured with the tool to read the book rather than books itself. Drop both the price of the kindle and more importantly the cost of the book and make a lower margin on higher volumes
Everyone that keeps commenting about cellphones, foldable OLEDs, and ultraportable laptops is missing the other killer feature of this device: eInk!
I have had a kindle for about 6 months now, and THAT is the killer feature that makes this device work for me. Try reading 1000 pg books on a cheap backlit netbook and see how your eyes feel after several hours. The eInk screen causes zero eyestrain because it is like reading paper. Also, there is absolutely no $300 laptop that is the same size as a Kindle. The device weighs 10.3 oz. Seriously, quit hating a device you’ve never held please!!!
Another idea would be to increase accessibility of the Kindle… make it more accessible to those with disabilities, especially visual disabilities…
Jaime/Talking Books Librarian at http://talkingbookslibrarian.blogspot.com/
Once there is a Kindle library, I might consider it. If I were a student and had the option of storing all of my textbooks on there, I might be even more inclined to purchase it. As a person that usually reads around 40-50 books a year, I’d rather put my money into used book stores than pay $10 for something I’m only going to read once and is also non-physical.
Jake
NoteScribe: Premier Note Taking Software
when we recently moved country we packed over a thousand books. We buy (from Amazon, Borders and various book exchanges) easily 5+ books a month.
On average I’ve found maybe 1 in 10 of those available in an ereader format for either the Kindle or the Sony product, and they are priced the same as the hardback version.
With a dead tree book I have options – lend it to a friend, give it away, sell it or get credit for it at a book exchange
With a DRM protected ebook I lose those rights.
With a DRM free ebook I’m limited in the quality/experience as they don’t leverage the underlying platform for a top tier layout experience.
Sure, with an ebook there are lots of cool things I can do – multiple bookmarks, carry a library with me, read with annotations visible or hidden, grab newspaper headlines… but there are also downsides – why do the Kindle and Sony readers flash to black when changing pages (really annoys me), why do I have to pay Amazon extra to read blogs I get for free elsewhere etc
If someone adopted a model that took the best of the cellphone industry and the ZunePass – a contract with a fixed price provides the device (with say a 2 year replacement option) and a certain number (unlimited?) of books that I can rent (maybe limit the number I can have “on loan” at any one time) then my issues of ownership and cost go away. Add to that an option to buy – where I own the right to resell/gift that single copy and we have the best of both worlds and can concentrate on making a better reader…
My thought is that the Kindle is a great idea, but it’s just too expensive up front for what I would use it for.
I don’t read as many books as I used too and so for me I can generally just wait and get the book in paperback for $6-10. And I’d only be reading one at a time so carrying around a paperback when I fly on a plan or sit around my house is not a big deal.
For me the advantage of the Kindle would be for things like reading blogs, catching up on news, and reading magazine articles. Things like this are updated frequently and so the data connection is a real plus. And it’s smaller than my laptop for convenience, and yet much larger than my iTouch so reading something long is easier.
As for books I tend to be more old school as well. I like “having” the books when I’m done with them and sticking them on my bookshelves. eBooks just haven’t taken hold for me yet.
If Amazon can figure out a business model where they get the cost down and tie in a newspaper or magazine subscription to it (along the lines of what the article is about) then I would be much more interested. But it would still be iffy as most newspapers now offer much (if not all) of their content for free and many magazines probably wouldn’t be as good given the heavy picture content they rely on.
Likely this is still an “early adopter” device and will require a few more years of being on the market to help develop a niche use and lower the costs further for general acceptance.
Am I the only one here who sees that the suggested pricing plan’s math doesn’t work?
It’s big, ugly and no self-respecting man would be caught carrying anything called a “kindle”. I think I’ll go snuggle up by the fire with my kindle and read some Jane Austen… sniff, sniff…
What about a partnership between a major newspaper and the kindle? I think it would do wonders for both the popularity of the kindle and help reverse the trends of newspaper readerships. I just wrote a recent post on my company’s blog about this.
I meant to include a link – http://voxp.wordpress.com/2008/11/25/whats-next-for-newspapers/
As usual, the obvious point is overlooked:
It’s *not* geeks who are buying the Kindle. Read some non-tech blogs, speak to people on the street, read some online reviews and you will realize that *regular* folks, who are fond of reading, are loving the Kindle.
good tips
Amazon Kindle: I love it! I want to get one but can’t. WHY?!?!?!?!?
I’m Canadian. NOT Fair. It hurts.
TechCrunch, Can you find out why this product isn’t available to your NAFTA trading partners up North?
All in all, I won’t be coming around any time soon to purchase the Kindle at its current price and in its current form. By form, I mean its hardware and the electronic method of reading, for which I only prefer for the computer. Real books are still preferable.
Am I the only one here who sees that the suggested pricing plan’s math doesn’t work?
Possibly, but then again, YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE COMMENTING ON A NEARLY YEAR OLD ARTICLE!