Farhad Manjoo has a nice “what-if” story up on Slate about what Sony can do to beat the Kindle. Sadly, what Manjoo is doing here is akin to helping a little old crazy lady across the street – at best his advice will be ignore and and worst he’ll be cursed out.
He basically writes:
Anyone looking to beat the Kindle, then, should look to the iPod: Study everything that Apple’s rivals did, and do the opposite.
The Register has a nice piece on hacking the Sony Reader, allowing you to install all sorts of goodies onto the Linux-powered e-reader. I’ve never been a big fan for the Sony Reader but clearly hackers prefer this device over the closed Kindle.
Usually when I read a long article, I’ll say something like, “Free up 20 minutes so you can read the whole thing.” I’m not sure I’m going to say that today, having just finished an article in the New Yorker, which is usually good for a profile or two, about the Kindle. And it’s not because the article is down on the Kindle—I don’t own any Amazon stock, so I don’t care if Kindle sinks or swims—but because it doesn’t really say anything that you probably didn’t already know.
I was hoping this wouldn’t happen, but I knew it would — it’s the danger of an always-on, always-connected society. Today, Kindle users found themselves a few books short; Amazon had, with no warning, pulled a kill switch on a set of books which a publisher wanted to no longer offer. The books were sucked out of the devices and customers were credited the ten bucks or whatever they paid — like it never happened. Scary, isn’t it? Positively Orwellian, in fact.
The “kill switch” has been brought up in other circumstances — most prominently with the iPhone. While Apple already holds sovereignty over the App Store’s contents, they also reserve the right to deactivate programs (or, one may extrapolate, activate programs) on any or all phones if they feel it’s necessary (or expedient). I never wanted an iPhone because I didn’t want to have any devices under the control of anyone but myself — and now I’m never going to buy a Kindle.
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Amazon is trying really really hard to get the Kindle out by Christmas in the UK, and you can’t hardly blame them. Given how successful the ebook reader has been in the US, you can’t help but expect the same results on the other side of the pond.
It seems that the Kindle 2 has an issue when used with the official protective case: it cracks. Obviously everyone that spent $30 on the case that’s suppose to protect the Kindle from such damage isn’t too happy right now. Amazon previously stated that owners were kind of out of luck and had to spend an additional $200 for a replacement but recently started replacing cracked Kindles. The change probably has something to do with a $5 million lawsuit that includes buyers of Kindle 2 and Kindle DX models “installed in a Kindle Cover designed by Amazon.”
This seems to have been an issue for a while now judging by reviews on Amazon. Apparently one of the clips that holds the Kindle in place also tends to crack the case. Read More
Look familiar? Yep. The Chinese have knocked off the Kindle, creating a device that looks just like the Kindle 2 and will be on sale in Japan for $210. The device will have a built-in cellular modem with SIM card.
And you thought self-published books were all rubbish. Author Boyd Morrison sold two books, the first one called The Ark, to Simon & Schuster. Boyd uploaded and sold the books himself and raised awareness for his novels by being a member of Kindle Boards and generally self-promoting.
He will be published in hardcover in 2010 and is working on his next book featuring swashbuckling adventurer Tyler Locke.
We’re starting to see more and more “hate” being thrown Amazon’s way. That’s because, of course, the Kindle is something of a success, and publishers, who already operate a pretty wonky business (more on that in a bit), are becoming concerned that Amazon will soon be able to wield the same kind of power that Apple did over the music industry. Basically, book publishers don’t want Amazon to “own” the digital book market.
The Catalyst Group, who ran a fairly unscientific study of Google v. Bing preferences, have run another fairly unscientific study of Kindle v. Sony Reader user preferences. The results? The Kindle won on all fronts, beating Sony’s aged ereader handily.
The Group asked 12 interviewees, six men and six women, what they thought of both devices. They were asked about physical controls, the general “feel,” UI, resolution, and shopping experience. Eight respondents preferred the Kindle overall, three preferred the Sony, and one apparently fell asleep and pretended to like both when he or she woke up because there was one tie.
The second generation Kindle just dropped in price, everyone. It can now be had for a dollar less than $300, which might just sway some folks to jump on the e-book bandwagon. At least Amazon hopes the $60 price drop will move a few more units.
E-book readers tend to be the sizes hardcover books – or a lot larger. That might be all well and good if you’re laying in bed, but the Bookeen Opus is about the size of a paperback, which makes it truely portable. The folks folks over at MobileRead got their hands on the small, but impressive, Opus for a sneak peak.
Before everyone gets in a huff, let’s consider Amazon’s intentions with these patent applications. Surely they would never allow advertisements to be placed in books which you have purchased legitimately at full price, so let’s put that out of our heads. But what if you could take a few bucks off the cover price at the cost of a few contextual ads relating (if possible) to the book’s content?
Personally, I wouldn’t mind — partially because I don’t use a Kindle or intend to any time soon, but more because it’s a no-lose situation. Amazon wouldn’t risk alienating its loyal Kindle base with dirty tricks like this, so it’s safe to assume it’ll be at least somewhat opt-in.
Don’t get too used to paying next to nothing (well…) for your Kindle books, friends. A clever analysis by a Berstein duo suggests that Amazon currently only makes a 61-cent profit for each $9.99 Kindle book it sells. Meanwhile, a $24.95 hardcover book nets Amazon a cool $4.25 in profit. So it stands to reason that, if Amazon wants to replace that lost profit, it’ll have to raise the price of Kindle downloads.
Jeff “Wide-awake Michael Stipe” Bezos told a set of analysts that the Kindle – as a physical object – and the ebook store are two different and separate animals and that the device team is completely separate from the ebook sales business. Why is this important? It means that Bezos sees his future in the selling of bits, not e-ink screens, and the addition of mobile readers for the iPhone and other mobile devices is not a fluke – it’s a business plan.
Another month, another version of the Kindle. I’ve been using a Kindle since it was shaped like a very thin doorstop and I’m delighted each time I see a new version. The latest version is the DX, a monstrous 9-inch version of the smaller Kindle 2 that supports direct PDF reading without conversion.
Why am I interested in the Kindle? Well, I already have a first-gen Kindle so I’m not too keen on upgrading immediately. But I’ve been waiting for Amazon to solve something with the Kindle DX that has been nagging me for quite a while. You see, I have a problem. I don’t want to read the New York Times on paper anymore but paper seems like the only logical way to read it. Reading the newspaper on a gadget is rude and dangerous – especially with toddlers around the house. It’s a tough sell to have a gadget at the breakfast table. But then I know that I’ll never read it on the desktop whether through the Times Reader or any other source. So the DX sounded great. I has all of the features of the current Kindle plus rotational sensing and a beautiful, huge screen that might just fit the entire NYT front page and not just one article. So that’s why I wanted to see the DX.
What Simon Dumenco lacks in tech savvy he makes up in relative prescience. There are a few issues media companies are dealing with now. There is a loss of ad revenue, competition from blogs, and, most importantly, falling circulation rates in communities that actually crave local news but don’t want to pay for it. There is a certain cohort of reader, however, that does not want to see the newspaper go away in its present form and there is a simple solution to their kvetching. Some folks expect the swift delivery of their news subscriptions in a format that is easily readable. While you could say “I thought that’s what the Internet is all about!” how are you going to convince a generation – folks in their thirties and beyond, for example – with the expectation that every morning a newspaper will be on the doorstep and a magazine will be in the mail to give that up and read their news on a screen?
By giving them a free e-reader.
At the Amazon shareholders’ meeting today, Bezos beat around the bush Kindle-wise, preferring not to state how many Kindles had been sold and how much money had come from and gone into the project. “I beg your indulgence on the question” was his way of stating “not palatable for shareholders at this time.” However, he was more forthcoming on the possibility of a color Kindle. Of course they’re working on one, why on earth wouldn’t they be?
But despite recent advances and even a color eBook on the market, Bezos says that color e-ink displays are “not ready for prime time,” and he doesn’t expect a color Amazon device for years.
About a half hour ago, Amazon opened up a new feature on the Kindle: the ability to read your notes and highlights on the Web. Readers have always been able to make notes and highlight text on the Kindle itself. Now those annotations appear on your account at http://kindle.amazon.com. Once you sign in, you can see all your notes.
While this opens up all sorts of possibilities, Amazon is taking a very conservative approach. You can’t share your notes with others. You can’t even edit them in your browser. All you can do is read them. That makes the feature little more than a Web archive of your notes and highlighted text snippets. It is a convenient feature, but why not enable sharing? Why can’t I share an excerpt with my friends on Facebook or Twitter (with the beginning of a quote and a short link)?
An analyst whose knowledge of the future is only curtailed by the misty damp that surrounds the ethereal plane is saying that the Kindle will make Amazon $1.6 billion in revenue with $400 million in profit. He also foresees that sales will go up 80% between 2009 and 2012 and that “subscriptions” will go up accordingly, leading to the agonizing death of newspapers and magazines. He also saw your fourth-grade hamster, Gonzo. He is doing well.
