From xkcd
Having used both Kindles 1 and 2, I thought it would helpful to list where the new Kindle excels and where it falters. The dead tree book will never die – I think it will even have more longevity and popularity than the boutique appreciation of vinyl records – but our generation will be the last to use “books” as our primary reading systems. Expect ebooks to hit colleges in perhaps five years and high schools and grade schools in about 7. That said, should you buy a Kindle now? Why and why not?
10 Reasons to buy a Kindle 2
1. It’s great if you travel. If you travel, the Kindle is a godsend. I’m the kind of guy who stocks up books for even short trips, fully expecting to finish War and Peace, Notes from Underground, and four Clive Cussler novels on a plane trip from Pittsburgh to Columbus. With the Kindle you have a full complement of books available at any time.
2. You can put anything you want on it. You can easily email DOC, TXT, and PDF files to your own Kindle email address for conversion to the Kindle – but that costs 10 cents.
3. It looks great. The Kindle 2 is an amazing improvement over the Kindle 1. If every manufacturer took cues on build quality and product life cycles from Amazon, we’d all be better off.
4. It feels great. This new version has excellent button placement and is thin enough to cut cheese. It’s eminently portable.
5. Almost any book at any time. Except for a few esoteric reference books I’ve found just about everything I need on the Kindle store. As more and more publishers go ebook – and I think an iPhone Kindle reader will truly blow the last bottlenecks out – this excuse will become ineffective.
6. It works in inclement conditions. I was in Mexico with the wife and kids and I wanted to test the Kindle out near the pool. Three books later and I felt like the laziest high-tech maven in the world. The ladies next to me brought twenty softcover novels with them and all of them got wet and messy. The Kindle worked like a dream.
7. The bookmarking and highlighting systems are vastly improved. The original Kindle had two methods for note-taking: you could select text and add a note or you could add a book mark. The new system refines those considerably and adds visual feedback whenever you take a note.
8. The dictionary is now in-line. When you move to a word, its definition appears at the bottom of the page. If you wanted a definition before, you had to pop out to a separate page.
9. You can almost see and understand the illustrations in 16 greyscale shades. Note the “almost.” However, it’s better than 4 shades, which was abysmal.
10. It is the future. Sorry, it is. Amazon nailed the ebook and they’re going to own the space for the next few years. Maybe they’ll pull a Netflix and sell the software to OEMs, which is fine by me. But ebooks are what we’ll be reading while we rocket to Mars in 2050. Or we’ll have our robotic concubines read them to us.
10 reasons not to buy a Kindle 2
1. It’s bad for research. I’m working on a book right now and I wanted to use the Kindle for all of my research. Sadly, this is almost impossible. The book is a physical object – you can move through it, skimming for notes and important points – and there is something in our education that gives us a sense of space inside a book. I don’t quite know how to explain it, but you know how you can pick up a book and show someone what you’re looking for in a few page turns? You know it was halfway through, maybe a third of the way down the page, and it was near another set of words. The Kindle is not conducive to that kind of mental map-making… yet.
2. It’s horrible for reference. Don’t buy a Kindle of you just read programming manuals. Programming manuals offer something different. While it seems counterintuitive that a document you can search programatically wouldn’t be good as reference material, you’re better off looking up function calls on a website and using the physical book as a guide to building your programs. This is a corallary of point 1, above, so this could change.
3. The Kindle is flimsy. You’ll go through your day thinking you will break your Kindle. You don’t fit that much screen on a thin device that is meant to be thrown into a bag without a care and not risk cracking it. There will come a day when you open your bag and see that your Kindle is dead, even in its case. It’s not your fault. Say it with me: it’s not your fault.
4. It’s not ready for students. Add points 1, 2, and 3 together and you come to the conclusion that this is not ready for students. This may be a good device for English classes requiring lots of long novel reading, but as an education tool it isn’t quite there.
5. The net connection doesn’t work internationally. For some reason last year I was convinced the Kindle had Wi-Fi built-in. I was trying to get on the Internet in Warsaw, Poland and I kept looking for that Wi-Fi button. Then I remembered – no Wi-Fi. And I cried. How I cried, my friends. Then I downloaded the Kindle book onto my desktop and dragged it over via the USB cable. So that’s, in essence, your international solution.
6. No SD slot. While the Kindle can easily hold 1,500 books, what if you’re the kind of person who likes to keep everything in its right place? Maybe you want to make a book playlist? Maybe you have 1,501 books? I don’t know. Sadly, the Kindle doesn’t allow for memory expansion. Not a big deal, but to some it’s a bad thing.
7. Flight attendants will tell you to turn it off on take off and landing. You can’t explain that it’s epaper and uses no current. You just can’t. It’s like explaining heaven to bears.
8. It contains a battery. Remember, Reader, the Kindle is mortal. It will die on you when you don’t have your charger.
9. It’s bottom heavy. The internal battery makes the device want to plop face down on your chest. I read it last night when I was sleepy and it kept getting ready to fall on me.
10. There’s just something about a dead tree book, isn’t there? It’s nice to pop into the airport news stand and pick up a novel. It just is. I’m sorry.
“Like explaining heaven to bears.” NICE!
Flight attendants DO love Kindle though, in my experience. After I explained Kindle to one flight attendant she brought us cookies from first class.
I bet every flight attendant would love to own a Kindle, considering how they have to pack everything they own in a tiny little case and are constantly living out of airports, reading books must be a real pain for them.
Good summary, JBiggs. I’ll probably get one soon enough, though I’m still waiting for my PRS-500 to crap out completely so I can justify the purchase. My wife did say that if I got a new Kindle she’d like to have the Sony, but I have a feeling that if I get a K2 she’s going to want one as well, which will just double the price.
Hey Weatherman-
Don’t wait for the 500 to die.. I just sold mine last weekend on eBay for $200. Takes a nice chunk out of the K2’s purchase price!
also perfect for flights are the new pulp magazines that are *only* on kindle, people might not realize this yet but you can’t even get paper copies for something like steampunk tales and, in a steampunk way that’s really cool!
Haha yeah the heaven to bears comment got me LOLing too.
HAHA i had a great mental image of actually trying to talk to a bear.
“Heaven to bears”
Incredible, and yes, I’m going to steal that.
Really nice article.
Not fair.
About the flight attendant bringing you cookies just because you own a kindle.
Mr. Briggs,
Fantastic! I very much appreciated your very very informative article “..10 reasons…”
Last night Mr. Bezos was on the Charlie Rose program, for an entire hour, many of your observations were NOT examined….
…Walking by an old book case and glancing at the title of an old book you’ve read years ago…brings back a lot of memories…
Kosmas
what do people think of the name, kindle? we have a post up on the name of electronic readers. let us know what you think. http://onthebutton.wordpress.com/2009/08/13/books-are-so-yesterday/
Thanks John,
Your 10 reasons to buy convinced me. Your 10 reasons not to buy reminded that it was actually a product manufactured on earth – not like anything from Apple (all Apple products are made by benevolent aliens and bestowed on mankind to aid in their evolution). “Explaining heaven to bears” slew me.Blogging at its best.
Not only did you give me great insight into this product but I now want to buy your book….really enjoyed your lists.
why are you so angry? I have a Kindle 2 and love it, but can understand why others may have questions, or even differing opinions. lighten up dude.
You don’t expect to laugh out loud reading a point by point review – I did a few times…and I’m convinced I want a kindle…thanks!
Kindle is like twitter, mostly useless. If you really think our kids will be reading off these you have to give your head a shake. I don’t see these replacing real books ever and certainly not within the next 5 years for the simple reason that you can’t flip through an ebook fast and find the info you are looking for and you can’t trade books the same as normal people do when they read a good book. Paper and pencil will always be essential to our human existence and evolution.
You don’t know how often I wish I had a Kindle. I’m one of those people who has a really difficult time finding a comfortable sitting position when I read. When I finally do find it, I’m forced to readjust almost every minute because of having to move my arm to turn the page. It sounds fickle but it’s incredibly annoying.
Also, I’m anal about the condition of my books…I always worry about nicking the cover or bending a page. Heaven forbid the spine should show any signs of use! I think that would drive me nuts. Since I hate bending the spine, I always have the hold the book at just the right angle to get maximum exposure to light…which means the book has to be moved every time I finish a page. It also means that I’m oftentimes reading the page at an angle, which I’ve recently discovered hampers my reading speed by about 30%. A Kindle would solve all these problems.
Yeah, I know I have a really weird set of personal preferences. I’ve promised myself that I’ll buy a Kindle when I’ve gotten through my existing stack of books. Now I just have to work on not buying books faster than I can read them!
I think you have OCD and should probably think about addressing that issue rather than dealing with it by buying an inanimate object. Repressing this kind of thing will really impact your life in the future when you have to share the things in your life (wife, kids, etc.), or is perhaps already impacting your relationships with friends. If it is isolated to books then you should really deal with it now so it doesn’t manifest itself and take a hold of your life. Just my two cents.
I don’t think he’s OCD at all. I love dead tree books, too, and it does bother me when spines get cracked and start to show heavy wear. That’s not because I’m OCD, it’s because I love books. Don’t even get me started about how I handle comic books ;) But seriously, think of something that you value and consider how you treat it – that’s how some people, myself included, feel about our books. We value them.
Yes, this is definaltely a case for meds. Forget the kindle, try the zoloft.
I don’t think he has OCD. I can reflect all the things he saying about himself on me, and I don’t have OCD.
I think Brad watches too much Dr. Phil.
Brad, You’re sounding a lot like a bear.
Wow, Brad. I think you’ve got psychoanalysitis and need to get that taken care of posthaste.
I’m with you on most of that, Eric. What books I do have I try to keep in perfect condition, without bent spines and crunched corners. I also don’t write or highlight in them, and I know all about flexing the pages to get good visibility while not cracking the spine.
So it’s a little strange, then, that I would like the Kindle 2 (which just arrived yesterday) so much: the device allows me to take copious notes, make tons of bookmarks, and carry them all with me without any concern; but you’d think that with such obvious care for physical books, it’s a double-edged sword since the “solution” involves not buying them anymore (or as often).
But I’m fine with that. For some books I’ll still buy the hard copy, and I may buy the Kindle copy as well in some cases (I’ve written to Amazon about bundling them as an option), but in the end, most physical books don’t end up being sacred to me; it’s just that once I have them I want to take good care of them.
I understand how some people really love books, but I never really got why people don’t like to bend the spine or dog-ear the pages.
When I read, I want the information, I don’t really care all that much about the presentation or the binding. I guess if it were a hardcover it would be different, but for a paperback?
When I was younger, I had to go to Bible class and there was some kind of unspoken respect for those who had books that had shown some ‘wear and tear’, as if their owner had actually read what was inside at every chance. Not that I read the good book at all nowadays.
I think a book is there to be read. The art is in the words and sentences, not in the quality of the binding.
Like my mother always said: don’t judge a book by it’s cover!
Just my two cents.
Eric:
You sound exactly like me. It has always been difficult for me to buy used books. It’s comforting to know that there is someone else who goes the extra mile to take care of books
You’re not crazy, I like reading while laying down, and with a Kindle you won’t need to turn pages or switch body positions to accommodate that. That is one reason I’m thinking about purchasing one. You can be supremely lazy with a kindle!
I have back problems and almost always read in bed because I need to get “flat”. I recently bought a kindle and I love it! First, I have had to get rid of over 10 file boxes of books last year because I moved into a small apartment. It broke my heart. However, after the purging I am finding that I enjoy fewer “things” in my life. The one problem with the kindle for me is going broke. I read constantly and buy constantly. Yikes!
You know what Eric, I have the exact same problem. It’s annoying isn’t it? You finally find the perfect position on your lazy boy for optimum comfort, and then you have to take your weight off an elbow to turn the page, which of course throws everything off. Your comment makes me want a Kindle.
I’m so glad that I’m not alone. And it’s not OCD, it’s just some strange form of respect for the written word.
I’m sure you said the same thing about vinyl records.
I think John is right. If Kindle 3 or 4 fixes the software problems to make it more of a reference product, it’ll be great for students. Same for iPod touch.
Today, my teens drag tons of books to and fro home and class – particularly tough for the six grader.
For schools, the cost of text books is thousands per student. Recycled text means the students don’t have the latest material.
For publishers, they have high COGS, uncertain inventory, and low repurchase since schools recycle books. eBooks would lower their costs, get fresh content into each school year, correct mistakes and unclear questions more frequently, and improve the service to students.
If today, the paper cost is 50% of a $100 book that is shared among 5 students, they can sell a $10 ebook and make the same money. If publishers and teachers care about the state of education, they need to move fast to help. Stop bitching about change – the only people hurt are the paper producers, shippers, and printers. Cheaper, fresh content, and easily accessible means smarter kids.
Let’s do this.
you do have a good point as far as schools are concerned.
It would be very interesting to see what the cost savings for the schools would be here and over what period of time the savings would be for.
Would you suggest a kindle (or similar device) be bought by parents for the kids to be used for years or would the kids get one to use for the year and only have to pay if they break them? How resilient is the device? Will it last more than a few weeks in the hands of a 12 year old?
Could actually be a good application for this.
a school pays $1,000 or so per student for textbooks. let the educators/politicians figure out the solution.
our job is to solve the technical problems and encourage overall adoption – for the benefit of the kids. and as someone said, for the green earth.
At the college level, you know, where people actually start to read a ton, students can pay $1000+ per semester for books. And if they have a good book buy back program, or use Amazon, they can unload some of those books at the end of term and get maybe 20% back or more, depending on the book edition.
If Kindle spreads into the educational market, and particularly gets adopted at the college level, students will get the shaft here. Particularly if Amazon doesn’t allow reselling of text. Students will buy those books for Kindle, maybe spending a little less, but there will be no secondary market. No Christmas book bonus.
Kindle is DRM for college books.
Us students already get the shaft, ebooks would be a godsend.
Besides the pain of having a 60 pound bookbag to lug around…
You get 20% on your books if you are lucky. More often than not, at least 2/5s’ of your books will be utterly useless because of new editions by semesters end. Plus, if you go to a big university they print their own books – so these books are far more prone to suddenly go from $120 to worthless in one semester because you can’t sell it online to other students at diff. universities that still use older edition.
One trend I’ve noticed is that more and more publishers are selling ‘loose-leaf’ versions of the textbook. Slightly cheaper than hardcover, because all you do is buy the loose-leaf pages and a binder.. however it makes reselling nearly impossible because bookstores won’t buy it back. You end up having to find other students on campus some other way to make the sale.
I’m a college student, and I wish we could use Kindle’s. Some of us are starting to buy ebooks due to slightly less prices (like from 80 bucks to 65, whoopity do), but reading from a laptop is not so comfy and tends to cause eye-pain and random bouts of you-tube surfing.
My son is sophomore in high school and several of his books are online. They have a few paper copies in the classroom for occasional use, but that’s it. This seems like a reasonable solution until something like the Kindle is made to be more durable.
I bought a leather cover for my kindle to give it durability. I don’t think it’s any more vulnerable than one of those expensive calculators that my kids had to buy.
If today, the paper cost is 50% of a $100 book
You’re clearly not a publisher. The cost of a book has very little to do with the cost of the paper. And everything to do with author royalties, editorial, marketing, and trying to make money on the big sellers to pay for the not so big sellers.
The COST difference between soft and hard cover is negligible, and the retail price difference is many multiples of the cost differential.
As a publisher, when I price a book, included in the many factors is: what is the worth of the ideas in the book, i.e., the intellectual property?
And then how does the format impact that price?
For professional books with a small market, the format is not all that relevant to the price.
You are wrong. Paper isn’t 50 percent of the cost of a $100 textbook. The paper is actually a very small percentage of the cost. The cost comes from all the man hours necessary to check and double check facts (and they still often are wrong), design time and the fact that textbooks have a relatively short shelf life. That’s OK on a cheap all-text novel but not on a book that requires a lot of design it’s bad.
The “save a tree argument for electronic books is largely a myth nowadays. Most newsprint and book and magazine paper now comes from fast growing trees grown pretty much like wheat or potatoes on farms.
I just wanted to put in a thought about e-books in the classroom that many of you may have dismissed.
As a school system would/could you trust a kindle reader (and the cost of one) to the 13 year old neighbor boy who pees in the backyard when he thinks no one is looking? And trust me there are many families that certainly could not pay the replacement cost and it would be extremely unfair to them.
And don’t forget the sliderule and the abacus …
That last message about the sliderule and the abacus was supposed to be a reply to @Brad. What happened?
This is the biggest load of ass I have ever read. I’m sure you can go to the index on a Kindle (or other ebook reader) then move to that page or even search for a particular word in the book.
The sharing a book thing? Don’t you realise that people will be soon sharing ebooks online and then authors will become the new recording artists getting annoyed that they aren’t getting paid anymore.
We need to stop cutting down all the rainforests, power to e-book readers.
lots of problems to solve, but that’s amazon’s challenge. doable.
don’t lose sight of the big picture benefit. help solve the problems.
Where did you get that $1000 from? Are we talking university or grade school here? Pretty damn sure that given the life cycle of a text book in the public school system each book probably costs less than $10 a year. Hell, for english class the books we had were 20-30 years old in some cases. thing is that newer versions don’t contain anything different.
I’m a high school teacher in the US. We pay about $70 per literature book per student, but we only buy for 1/2 of the population (they don’t all take the class at once). We do this every five years. That means that we paid $43,750 on lit. books this year, or $8,750 per year for the book’s life, or $7 per student per year (if I did the math right). I know that the Kindle seems great in a lot of respects, but I don’t think it is going to improve that number.
Errr… “soon be sharing books online” ?
Where have you people been living for the past ten years? From book torrents through eDonkey past IRC and straight to gigapedia, people have been sharing books online for a while now…
Who are you people? How do you find something on a very long web page? Do you scroll down looking for it? I type ctrl-f and let the browser search for me. Who really wants to go page turning for something then you can search for the phrase? My Kindle is arriving today, and the main reason I got it was for reference and studying. I will be buying programming and math books and I bought it for the e-search feature. Computers parse text much quicker than we do (not to mention indexing), so we should use them for that.
@Aaron – I’m sorry, but the Kindle doesn’t cut it as a reference and study book. I’ve been a K1 user since day one and _never_ go anywhere without it. Read three novels at Burning Man this year. I refuse to read any fiction that is _not_ on the kindle. I have my K2 in in hand right now. But, with all my love for it – I still buy 100% of my reference books on paper – The major problems:
o Too small a screen for reference.
o Resolution not good enough for reference. Diagrams are horrible and don’t even get me started on pictures like maps.
o Impossible to “flip” to where I want to be the way I do with paper reference – both from a search as well as iterate back and forth between the pages.
I’m sure these problems will all be solved eventually, but until then – it’s not even close to being useful as a reference guide.
Brad, fortunately progress happens despite the protestations of the luddites.
Maybe if you’d RTFA, you’d know this is one of the reasons the author says NOT to buy one.
Anyone who doesn’t use them for study or reference will be fine.
You obviously don’t work with teenagers. They gravitate towards anything electronic like magnets and shy away from paper and pens.
That’s probably why YOU prefer a real book, but rest assured, in the next few years in addition to their laptops student will be required to purchase a similar ebook reader instead of the school spending thousands and thousands of dollars to purchase and replace text books. As it is right now, they’ve stopped issuing them and they host the excerpts for class online. Now students can bring these resources with them to class also…
I agree. This kind of technology will benefit schools and the military the most.
If God had meant for men to fly, He would have given them wings. The 21st century is okay, come on in.
I lol’d @ 7. Brilliant.
2. You can put anything you want on it. You can easily email DOC, TXT, and PDF files to your own Kindle email address for conversion to the Kindle – but that costs 10 cents. See below.
Comment: I’m not sure what I was supposed to “See Below” I likely just missed it.
It should be noted that you can send documents to “kindle_email”@free.kindle.com and the document will be converted free of charge and emailed back to you as an attachment. I’ve never had it take more than a minute thus far and it bypasses the nominal 10 cent charge.
I often see people complaining about this fee, so it should be noted that the conversion only costs money if you want it delivered wirelessly to your kindle.
I have the Kindle 1 and have no plans to upgrade to Kindle 2 at this time… perhaps Kindle 3…
Sorry, I messed up on the See Below. I had another point but I edited out by slowly scrolling over to it with a joystick and waiting for the epaper on my laptop to refresh. ;)
I have never actually incurred the 10 cent charge, though I can’t say for certain that I never will be.
I’ll think about it when they make it look less like… how you say… dang ugly!
Actually, regarding the lack of a missing SD memory slot: The Kindle 1.0 has this and I use it with a 2 Gig SD card. It’s a shame Amazon removed this feature from Kindle 2.0 (this is the sole reason I’m not upgrading.)
If you really want a Kindle with this functionality, find yourself a used Kindle 1.0 .
I’m kinda wondering (and am going to ask Amazon) whether the micro-USB port used for charging and syncing could possibly be used with something like a thumb drive. It’d be clumsier than an SD card, but you’d have potentially another 8GB or whatever you want just by throwing a thumb drive in your bag.
Perhaps you may want to look into some USB-on-the-Go technologies.. I have a 30 gig Archos AV500 with an OTG interface, I use it with my digital SLR when I’m out and about, saves hauling a laptop and I can plug a CF reader directly into it.
I’m not a fan. I like books made of paper.
The biggest reason not to buy it is that it is still too expensive. When it hits $200 I’ll get one.
Borders has the Sony PRS 505 on sale (with coupon below) for $199.00 (June 11, 2009).
http://www.bordersmedia.com/coup/coupon199ser0609.asp?cmpid=SA_20090611_REW
I agree it’s too expensive, and while I think the 3G book downloads are great, I still don’t get why Amazon is trying to be a hardware developer. Does anyone doubt this device would be cooler if Apple designed it? Of course that wouldn’t help in making it less expensive. But electronic paper has made great progress, you can have a white background, multiple colors, and Plastic Logic is coming out with one that is flexible this year.
I think Amazon should let someone else take care of the hardware, otherwise we are going to be stuck with a dated device.
I think another reason is touched on by the commenter who mentioned the flight attendant bringing cookies: it’s the new ipod. Flashing an iPod now is passe, but a Kindle…. get ready for some attention ala business-man-setting-cell-phone-on-the-bar!
“It’s like explaining heaven to bears”
Most clever line I’ve read on TC in years!!!
I agree that Kindle is the future whether people want to believe it or not. Here is an article from webpronews.com with some numbers.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/02/04/will-kindle-20-mirror-ipods-success
Amazon will hit critical mass with this thing in the near future.
sad but true: this might be the future for the masses (huge economic benefits for numerous industries and customers) BUT what about the haptic experience of skimming through a real paper book? what about the actual feeling of feeling written words? It’s of huge importance for me and, besides loving technology, i’ll abandon ebooks and am willing to pay more money for real books.
Hit the nail on the head there.
Speaking of “… the actual feeling of feeling written words”: I was browsing through a book store one day and found some Russian math books printed in the ’80s using letterpress. Very tactile. You don’t get that with offset printing.
Why does one presume the death of the other? Isn’t there a place for physical books as well as e-books? I’m considering a Kindle for my casual reading. There’s a lot that I read, for fun, that I’ll probably never go back to. But I’ve still got the book hanging around, taking up space and gathering dust. Aside from the intial outlay, the cost of ebooks is also much more reasonable. Of course there are some things I love, which I’ll always want a hard copy of, but I simply don’t need to have every book I’ve ever read, and will read in the future, loitering around.
Do you think this also might make getting non-mainstream books easier? Would publishers be more inclined to take chances if they didn’t have to invest in a print-run? Having foreign language books important can be an expensive hobby; I’m trying to discover if this is a reasonable solution.
Also. WAY too expensive (at least by 50%) and why would you have such a small free-space offer?
1 gb free? even more advanced online backup services offer at least 2gb and they are not even supposed to be used as a ‘drive letter’..
Part of me loves the idea of it. Part of me hates the idea of it. As Hamlet would say: To Kindle or not to Kindle, that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler to not cut down trees . . . etc.
When are they going to add a backlight?
I hope they never add a backlight. I look at back-lit screens all day and find it a terrible strain. I much prefer the non-backlit Kindle with a good reading light.
So do you think it is worth it to get the insurance option if you travel a lot and throw it in your bag a lot?
You left off #11 of why not to buy a Kindle — DRM.
You can’t do anything with the book on a Kindle, save from loaning your Kindle to someone. Don’t you borrow a book from a friend now and then?
See while everyone was ranting about iTunes drm, Amazon has gotten away with it in digital books (and Audible the co. they bought).
Yes, the DRM is the real showstopper; should be reason #0 on why not to buy. Tim O’Reilly wrote a nice article about it a couple days ago: http://www.forbes.com/2009/02/22/kindle-oreilly-ebooks-technology-breakthroughs_oreilly.html
The ePub format looks promising. The Sony reader seems to be supporting it. And “fbreader” for Linux has embraced it.
I’d also like to hear people’s thoughts (or see another post) on using iPhones and Androids instead of these single-purpose book devices.
I love the idea of the Kindle, but agree that it could use some improvements and is just way too expensive right now. I don’t think that it will replace physical books anytime soon – don’t you just LOVE the smell and feel of a real book?
It’s really sad when people post xkcd comics without the alt text. Half the joke is missing.
I’ve read 4 books in the last two weeks. For free. It’s called a library.
The two reasons I won’t buy a Kindle: no color and too expensive. Drop the price to $150 and give us full color pages, and we’ll talk.
But I’ll still continue to buy and enjoy dead tree books. I like having a library.
For the NOT column, how about the price? The future can’t be $300 in this economy for many people, as they’ll just have to shrug and go “I guess the future will have to do without me”.
I didn’t put in the price because the books are cheaper than regular hardbacks. I will pay the price but I’m a rich blogger SO i didn’t want to get into that argument.
I feel that this is a misleading statement. If you are going to compare prices, I feel that trade paperbacks are a better comparison than hardbacks. When compared against a trade paperback, the $9.99 price the Kindle pushes is not competitive with a $7.99 trade paperback.
I feel that this is especially true when you read books from small imprints who do not release hardbacks, only paperbacks of their products.
The paperback in general is a better comparison since it is the low price, mass-market version of the dead tree book. The hardback is much more of a collectors item based on the physicality of the book, not the content. The hardback is also focused on profit through it’s exclusive timed release versus the trade paperback.
E-Books are all about content, so your comparison should be against the content focused dead tree book, the trade paperback.
That is the main reason that why I feel that e-books still come up short. When compared against a trade paperback they loose on initial cost, cost per book, cost of ownership and size. Until Amazon can deliver a Kindle that is an obviously better choice, the Kindle will remain a dubious buy for me. It’s a frivolous luxury buy.
But it all depends on what kind of paperbacks your reading. Most of the paper backs I read are $14 a pop so it does really add up to even out nicely in the end considering that every time I walk into a book store I end up buying about $70 worth of books, and its thats not to say I do it because I can afford it, because I can’t, but I’m an avid reader and I just can’t help my self when I walk in there. So to compare money wise would be really hard, there’s to many variables.
Really dude, that’s your theory – that Amazon sells 7.99 mass market paperbacks for 9.99? Next time look it up first. The Kindle version is always less (at least I haven’t seen otherwise). On a 7.99 paperback you may only save a dollar or two, but you may save $15 on a hardcover.
A few clarifications:
1. It only costs 10 cents to convert a document to the Kindle format if you want to send it wirelessly over Kindle’s internet connection. If you have Amazon email you the file to your computer to transfer to the Kindle by USB, it’s free.
2. A Kindle at the beach or pool is great, but they don’t like water any more than a book does (in fact, maybe less so).
3. If you’re in a hurry at the airport, the Kindle’s Amazon ebook selection is often better than those miniature bookstores, and it can often be downloaded faster than the time it takes you to pay for a book at the cashier.
I purchased a dry pak bag that fits my Kindle very well. I took it to the beach with me, no problems.
I think it is weird but everyone I talk to either loves it or hates it. Maybe I’m a bit behind, but I have never used a Kindle, and honestly, don’t think I ever will. First off, I can’t get over the steep price. But more than that, I just don’t think it is useful enough. I watched this video clip about the Kindle ‘revolutionizing’ reading http://www.newsy.com/videos/kindle_2_reading_revolution/, but your reasons not to buy a Kindle outweigh all the benefits for me. The thought of so easily breaking something that cost so much to buy? Not at all appealing. I know it’s ‘not [my] fault’ if it breaks, but perhaps it is my fault for paying so much for it.
Steep price !!!! God there are so many idiots around !!!
This thing is a technological marvel. You get free data transfers of the books wirelessly. You get e-paper which is tens of thousands of little beads electronically rotating at fast speeds at the click of a button.
The price is reasonable and fair for what you get.
If you are too stupid to not look after the things you buy, then you do not deserve to own it.
I suggest you stay away and let the smart people buy and use this device.
Hey Gregory, don’t be a dick.
Yeah, yeah yeah.
But when oh when oh when oh when is it coming to the UK?
Gits.
And everywhere else! Tosser! :)
“It’s like explaining heaven to bears” BRAVO!
This phrase is going to work its way into my everyday vernacular.
reason #11 not to, you will no longer own physical books which is a bummer to some.
When Amazon gives me a free e-version of a dead-tree book I purchase, I’ll buy a Kindle.
Sign the petition: http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=p8mHGojrK_KP7Zm0eEFS6Gw
One big downside over paper books is that you can’t sell your ebooks when you are done with them. I think Amazon should buy them back from you for 60% of the price. After all how many books are worth rereading?
Sadly, robotic concubine development efforts are way behind schedule. A screening of Austin Powers 6-months back put the team on the wrong track.
Great points. I unfortunately lost my Kindle 1, left in an airplane seat pocket. My fault, of course, but it’s an odd size — not pocket size like a phone or PDA, nor laptop size for the briefcase. Didn’t discover it was missing for 24 hours which told me something (and contributed to my not recovering it, no doubt).
BTW at least one university, where I teach, is all-ebooks, all-the-time already, PC/PDF-based.
> 7 … You can’t explain that it’s epaper and uses no current. You just can’t.
Say it’s like an Etch-a-Sketch. Actually true.
> It’s like explaining heaven to bears.
Try “Bears Discover Fire” by Terry Bisson.
Like an etch-a-sketch is exactly how I explain the tech to people. They all seem to understand… either that or they just smile and nod to make me go away….
That last point is a little too likely…
I thought flight attendants made you turn your gadgets off so that you won’t be distracted in case they have to give instructions.
True, but they’re also concerned about stray transmissions from electronic devices affecting plane electronics, and it’s easier for them to say “turn ‘em all off” instead of “you have to turn off deviceA, deviceB, deviceC”, but you can leave on “deviceD, deviceE and deviceF – oh, and if you have a third generation deviceB you can leave that on, but if you bought your deviceA after 2008 when the manufacturer stopped using such-and-such parts you’ll have to turn that off.”
:D
Actually, they are not really concerned about stray electronic signals. I’ve worked at an airport, and all of their equipment is shielded for that kind of thing. Otherwise, they would be patting you down to make sure you didn’t have a device on in your pocket. Trust me, interuption of their avionics is not their concern.
Best/relevant/smart and funny article I’ve read on TechCrunch in years.
Thanks.
Not sure I agree that in 5 years eBooks will hit education sector. Unless someone comes in with a great way for old skool publishers to make money on it. Right now, they sell and re-sell big textbooks over and over to college bookstores. Once it all goes digital, how are they going to continue to make $$?
In a few year, when your kindle(n) breaks, and you don’t want to buy a new one, how are you going to access all the books you purchased for it?
You are evermore forced to give money to Amazon to continue to read your books for the foreseeable future.
It worked with iTunes.
No. they show up on your new kindle.
Right, they show up on your new kindle, but you have to keep buying new Kindles to retain the ability to view your books.
Pay $359 every few years to have access to “your” books. And I think they have a limit of 6 lifetime transfers to new Kindles.
You can download them to your PC, for one thing.
Kindle may be the future, but I don’t see any compelling reason to own one now. I just got a XP laptop for $300 that does a decent job of displaying e-books. Plus other things.
–
http://www.chl-tx.com
But are these reasons good enough for someone to upgrade from the 1st version?
I focused on the new version for this article, but you could get away with keeping the old version unless you HAVE to have text-to-speech. Anyway, your K1 will crack one of these days.
Don’t you have to re-buy all your books in eBook format? I don’t really want to re-purchase all the books I own just to have them all at the ready. why would I want to purchase a $6 copy of Angels and Demons when I already bought it for $1 at Half-Price Books.
I could download a slew of eBooks from torrent sites but they aren’t always the best quality. Ithink I’ll stick to paper.
The more salient point is: You paid for a Dan Brown Book?!
1. Who doesn’t read more than one book at a time? Kindle makes it easy to haul the 5-6 books that I’m currently reading around with me when I travel (or walking to the neighborhood coffeeshop).
2. I keep about 10% of the books that I buy and read. They go into my bookself; the other 90% I end up trying to re-sell. It’s a sucker’s game. Buy a hard-back book for $25-$30, then read it, then try to re-sell it for $5. At least with the Kindle, I pay $6 for a book, and I come out ahead that way.
2.5 (related) I’m interested in the content, and not really interested in owning a physical thingy. Owning another book (or CD) is just one more physical thing taking up my space. Highly prefer legally purchased ebooks or MP3s.
3. Has there ever been a back-lit display that didn’t absolutely didn’t suck ass? Hooray e-paper!!
.
I take issue with your #7. I think bears COULD grasp the concept of heaven…. Quite a bit faster, anyway…
“I’m the kind of guy who stocks up books for even short trips, fully expecting to finish War and Peace, Notes from Underground, and four Clive Cussler novels on a plane trip from Pittsburgh to Columbus.”
I read War and Peace in two-page across pdf on my laptop for free. I like the two-page across format on a wide screen. My money is on netbooks for portable e-reading.
On number 10 for negatives. What I like better is spotting a novel in the airport shop, going on my kindle and buying it for less.
“The ladies next to me brought twenty softcover novels with them and all of them got wet and messy.”
Watch your dangling modifiers. Are you trying to say the books got wet and messy or the ladies next to you? :)
Daniel, that’s not a dangling modifier. The best example of dangling modifier I ever heard was “The bride wore a pink sash under her breasts, which hung down to her knees.” This came from a student.
The problem is pronoun/antecedent confusion.
Now all that is needed to complete the Kindle circle is a dedicated book torrent.
…not really.
It is easier to explain kindles to flight attendants than it is to explain them to Homeland Security. Three runs through the X-ray and a bag search, and still no comprehension. I suspect, like Mr. Lyons, that it did have something to do with the in-betweeness. A K1 fits neither the cell phone nor the laptop.
Beware to the ctrl-f, / , and C-s searchers among you. Mr. Biggs’s observations about the curious difficulty of fast access in e-books mirrors my own experience. This can be mitigated by thoughtful publishers’ taking care of a table of contents, but that seems the exception rather than the rule to this point.
Is a Kindle for you? Ask yourself if you like books, or if you like reading. I like reading much more than I like books. I will read a backlight screen, but I soon regret it. I hunt up the most foxed, cheapest paperback at the used bookstore, because the content doesn’t change. For me, the Kindle is a delight. Mr. Rhoades observes that the trade paperback is a more direct competitor, and that rings with truth. Two points to consider – books do get released for less the $9.99 when they have trades to compete with. Some older ones are quite cheap – $2.00 or so, but there is less of a difference between the cost of the trade and the cost of the hardback. The trade paperback comparison falls down when the read must be timely, and hardback is the only alternative. Alas, this is often driven by the twin exigencies of business and social posturing, but reality does intrude on life, and the kindle eases the way.
One point I never see discussed in threads dedicated to the Kindle is how many promos you get. You’re certainly perceived by the publishing community as one of those maven types, and so the ply you with free stuff. Some of it has been good, some terrible, some I would have purchased at full price if I had not been offered it for free. Since December, six free novella-or-longer pieces, three discounted-to-a-dollar works, and another 3 outside the bounds of my taste.
“Ask yourself if you like books, or if you like reading.”
If you put it that way, I do appreciate physical books for their intrinsic charm as much as I enjoy the actual activity of reading them. That is obvious from the fact that I plan to keep indefinitely quite a number of physical books that I will likely never read again.
One can be an active reader without being a bibliophile, and I am definitely a bibliophile. There is just something about having an entire wall of book-laden shelves that no collection of digital ebooks on a Kindle or similar device will ever be able to reproduce. The same could be said about physical CDs or albums versus MP3s on an iPod. I have a degree in Computer Science, so I am definitely not a Luddite, but I still prefer tangible objects over digital ones if given a choice.
If there are active readers who are not bibliophiles, then devices like Kindle are right up their alley; I say more power to them. However, I just hope that ebooks will not kill the paper books market for those of us who still prefer paper and ink over pixels on a screen.
I love my books, too. I bought my Kindle as a sort of consolation prize because when we moved to Massachusetts we moved into a smaller house (for the next 3 years) and there simply isn’t room for my books, so they’re all still stored in boxes. I don’t like library books (I get creeped out that hundreds of strangers have probably read them while sitting on the toilet and stuff) and I MUST read, so we decided that the Kindle was the best option. I can continue to get new books and read all I want, and we don’t have to store the books anywhere physically.
At some point in the future I hope to have a house big enough to dedicate a room as a library, but that is many years in the future. By that time, I’ll be financially able to buy the paperback AND the ebook, if they haven’t started bundling them (which I expect they will eventually).
I love my Kindle 2. The portability is awesome. Being able to have someone recommend a book and then be reading it 2 minutes later is awesome. Finished the first book in a series you weren’t sure you’d like enough to buy more than that first book, and now it’s 3am and you HAVE to know what happens next? Like, RIGHT NOW? Kindle to the rescue. Small space, lots of books, ability to acquire new books quickly… nice. I also prefer it for things like reading in bed, because I find it is very hard to find a comfortable position that I can read both sides of the pages from without having to shift. Either the book is in an awkward position or I’m reading at an angle or the light isn’t good… with the Kindle you get one good position and you’re good to go. And you don’t have to prop your book open with the edge of your plate while you eat lunch…
Yup, love my Kindle. Love my books. Love having both.
I also laughed hard at the Bears comment and will be stealing it as well. I was wondering, and this may be a question I should leave on the Amazon site. but I notice that in the Kindle store all of the titles say, Kindle version. what does that mean exactly? Does that mean they are abbreviated like audio titles are?
No, it just means it’s available in Kindle format.
If it didn’t require double purchases, I’d get a Kindle.
Say I own a few thousand books already, and for some (textbooks, D&D books, etc) it would be really convenient to have them on something like the Kindle. If I want it in the new format I have to repurchase the book.
Contrast this with my MP3 player, where I simply need to rip my old CDs to my hard drive to put them on the portable device. I’ll buy new music in digital form, but I have a lot of older music that I still want to listen to that (thankfully) I don’t have to repurchase to carry around with me on any new device.
If there were some way of buying a hard copy of a book and it coming with the digital version, I’d get a Kindle in a heartbeat. I don’t know of any good way of doing this, though, and it seems fairly impractical.
As an addendum – is there any way to load public domain books for free (via a USB interface or something) in an open format? Or does the Kindle only read Amazon’s format?
Yes. Go to Feedbooks. Tens of thousands of out-of-copyright titles. All free and easy to upload to the Kindle over the wireless link. No PC needed.
My god that comment is ridiculous !!!!
Say I have some soap and it only comes in liquid form, but I really want it in solid form. So I have a problem that I have to then go out and buy both the liquid format and the solid format. This means the liquid format sucks as I have to double pay for the soap, when I really only wanted the solid format and the liquid format was my backup just in case I had a longing for the old liquid format.
You idiot. Scan the books into your computer and use OCR tools to convert them to a format for the kindle. Just because your neanderthal brain finds it too difficult to do, and it requires more effort than using your bullshit CD ripping software to do, does not mean you can not do it.
Be honest with yourself !!! You are just like most idiots out there, who have no idea what you really want and why, you just ask for everything because you can, and because writing a bullshit post on a website requires no effort on your behalf to actually think or to use your tiny brain properly.
Note to self:
Do not ask Gregory Pastik if you want an appropriate metaphor, simile, or coherent statement on anything.
Mr. Pastik’s reaction perfectly demonstrates the unbridgeable gap between those who only value objects for their usefulness and those who also value objects for their intrinsic charm in addition to their usefulness. Those of us in the latter category find talking to those in the former category to be as frustrating as “explaining heaven to a bear.”
If it was not for the latter group of people, though, there would probably not be any man-made object that outlived the generation in which it was created, and museums full of artifacts from ancient civilizations, objects with only artistic value and no practical value, would probably not exist.
I LOVE my Kindle 1. I have loaded at least 200 books with the help of a 2GB card. A great percentage of these books were FREE! Or Cheap! If you use Mobibooks (or something like that) you can translate them for your Kindle. I travel with it. I take it to the bed with me. I eat lunch with it. I am considering picking up a hardback to reread because I don’t want to double-own books and pay that fee, but I know I am tempted to buy the Kindle version just for the convenience of carrying it with me and my arthritic hands won’t have to struggle trying to hold it at night in the bed. The Kindle is for those that love to read. All the other stuff is not necessary for my happiness.
Wish I had read Anna Karinina on Kindle. Man my hands hurt truing to manage that book, LOL
Interesting article. not sure if kindle will replace books in the next five years or even 10 years. The prices is not in reach of most college students. Also, just like someone said before, if you lose your kindle. You have to pay almost $400 to replace it every time. Amazon is moving in the right direction, I think, but they need to think a little harder and be a little more creative.
If you are not sure, then why are you even making a comment ? Just shut up already.
The price will be heavily subsidized when it hits schools you fool. Just like many things have student discount now. The price will be fine.
That comment on losing your ebook is just ridiculous, the books can be backed up on your computer, and amazon has a record of it, and it is no different than being a retard and losing anything else several times.
Oh so, you Mr NOBODY things Amazon should try harder !!! They should be more creative !!!! What have you ever done in your life ? Where are your achievements ? This technology is innovative and advanced. They have beaten Apple to the first mover advantage in an area which Apple should also be, and all the other Tech leaders in asia and like Microsoft have been left behind and will be forced to play catch up.
Before you start criticizing a 27 Billion dollar company for not being more creative, think about who the leaders are in this field and how much users love this product.
Next time, best you do not comment, or think carefully about what you write first.
why are you so angry? I have a Kindle 2 and love it, but can understand why others may have questions, or even differing opinions. lighten up dude.
I have a kindle and love it. but you might be the kind of guy that would benefit from a real book, a bath and some tea. Mellow out buddy.
“Next time, best you do not comment, or think carefully about what you write first.”
Well, in that case let me tell you … I don’t really know what to say.
Looking forward to further your mind-expanding and enlightening comments on that one.
holy shit gregory…SOMEone should shut up all ready. wow are you obnoxious or WHAT?
The Kindle is bank for Amazon.
Once Amazon secures contracts in the education system (starting with universities and textbook publishers), it’s success will make the iPhone look like Pet Rock.
Give college students a choice between:
1. A 45-pound backpack full of textbooks to carry
2. A 10.2 ounce pencil-thin device with all required reading for the year
No contest.
They’ll eventually be making more money from textbooks than novels.
Text books on Kindle, Yay! Happy, happy, joy, joy!
reason 11 is that in the downturn… i’ve gone old school and got a library card. nothing can beat free reading.