Has Amazon finally got the printed-book killer?

[thatcrazycajun]

So now Amazon.com honcho Jeff Bezos apparently thinks he and his incredibly successful firm can succeed where Sony, Microsoft, Adobe and others have all failed: in bringing to market a successful e-book reader and format, called Kindle. (See CNet's report on the product's splashy launch here.)

I can see three strikes against it right off the bat:

1. !t's still way more expensive than your average old-fashioned mass-market paperback ($399 vs. about $8.00—and don't think I've forgotten the good old days when new paperbacks were less than $3!). I don't think a lot of people will be willing to fork over hundreds of dollars in one big honkin' outlay when they can spend teensy amounts to buy one book at a time (or more, for hardcovers not yet reissued in paperback).
     
2. No backlight! (How the frak are you supposed to read it at night on a plane or bus? Or in a poorly-lit indoor room when you can't turn on a lamp or something?)
    
   
3. It's small enough that it can be all too easily lost, stolen or dropped and busted, not only putting you out your fancy-schmancy reader (and four Benjamins), but half your library as well. (The unit stores its books internally and requires no intermediary PC to purchase or transfer books bought; Amazon has hooked it directly into their online store using Sprint's EV-DO network.)

What do y'all think? Has the Jeffster really got something here? Or is there simply no substitute for the tactile sensation of a real dead-tree book in your hands?

Comments

[stevemb.livejournal.com]

$400 for a display unit and content tied to a specific device?

Survey Says: X bzzzztt!

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

I think both icons have the right of it. El Jefe got hisself a bad batch of frop, like, dude, with some ergot or something.

[mdlbear]

1. Price needs to come down by a factor of 10 at least.

2. That's not an issue: it's readable in full sunlight; if it's too dark to read, get yourself a booklight.

3. Size is an issue only because of price. But if you can't connect it to your PC and load it up with PDF's, or copy the books you've bought to your PC, it's dead in the water.

[mneme]

Definitely on that last.

I'd guess you can, given the SD card reading ability (why read/write SD cards if it can't read books off them?), but we'll see.

[wolfette]

nope.

I had a play with the display models of the iPhone last week. Now *that* is more like the device that will be a threat "dead tree" books - a device that has more than one use. Phone, notebook, calculator, camera, data storage, internet browser, decent sized screen for watching videos or reading text, yet small enough and light enough to fit easily in a top pocket. I don't actually want an iPhone (yet) but , as a SF fan all my life, it reminded me of those essential gadgets characters in the old books used to have.

[mneme]

I do think the screen tech in the kindle and sony readers is a step in the right direction -- oleds (which IIRC is what both use) isn't backlit, but that's a -good- thing -- they're much, much easier on the eyes than a traditional backlit display, and the battery life is to die for.

The price definitely isn't right yet.

Small is good. Stand-alone networking is good. SD card support is good.

Conclusion: I'm not going to buy it (hell, for readers, I've got a zaurus (good backlit display, full computer), a sidekick (tiny but readable display, networked), and come winter, I'll have a shiny new X0 laptopish to play with (which also has a "no backlighting, easier on the eyes" mode). But if I weren't carrying around so much hardware already, it would be an interesting question.

[mdlbear]

It's not OLED (which are emissive) but eInk. Reflective and bistable, so it doesn't need power except while actually changing the display. Contrast and resolution similar to newsprint or mass-market paperback: about 150dpi.

I've seen the older version of Sony's reader. It had DRM, and tanked in the marketplace. Their current reader does not have DRM.

Go for the XO.

[mneme]

Hmm. I think it's more generically EPD (electronic paper display) -- eInk being the leading company in that field, but thanks for the pointer. The Sony reader I've seen seems to display text, word, and pdf files using a nice, passive-reflective screen, reads SD cards, and is definitely being used primarily for non-DRM content -- I take it that's the newer one?

Buying the X0 as an ebook/toy is a bit silly, but hey, it's the same price (using the b1g1 program) as the kindle, is still networked, and is for a good cause (and runs linux and can run a more standard disty if one wishes).

[mdlbear]

I'm pretty sure eInk is the only company shipping EPD in quantity at the moment, but I could be wrong. The Sony and Phillips readers are definitely eInk.

The XO, if I remember correctly, is a transflective LCD. Apart from being a little thicker and heavier, it's a lot closer to what I'd want to see in a reader at the $200-400 price point. That will change once EPD-based readers move into the double-digit price range more appropriate for single-purpose devices.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

What the other folks are saying, mostly. I read ebooks constantly on my PDA; some of the advances -- like the screen and battery life -- in this and Sony's reader are steps forward.

But, as everyone else is also saying, a successful ebook reader will need to be connectible to a computer (directly to the net, even if only to an Amazon store, is a good start) and will need to be able to process all the major formats currently in use for ebooks (plain text, .rtf, Microsoft Word files, .pdf files, Palm ebook reader files (.pdb), Microsoft ebook files (.lit), and maybe two or three others). Without those two things, in particular, any reader is a nonstarter.

Small isn't as problematic -- in fact, weighing 10 oz is a very nice thing, with such a relatively large screen. And it looks like the unit does have a "skim" selector down the side, which is one thing the PDA experience is missing (unless you use the stylus to crank down a scroll bar).

Finally, for price, I'd say you want something on the order of $100 for a reader, not $300, since they seem to think they're ALSO generating revenue per book. By the time you hit 250 books at $10 per, you've spent ohgodsHOWmuch; that's far too expensive.

Overall, nice try; back to the drawing board, though, guys.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Um, if the description of the Kindle is right, it *can* connect to a computer, via the included USB cord, and you can transfer text and html (not pdf or pdb or .lit files though) files across to it.

By the time you hit 250 books at $10 per, you've spent ohgodsHOWmuch; that's far too expensive.

10$ for any book would be too expensive, but it's 10$ for the hardcovers; the paperback releases are cheaper.

Just out of curiosity, I had a quick look at some of my books (not the whole library). Just counting hardbacks that I bought new and bought myself, I found 60 in short order. At 6$ per (the price for a new release hardcover book at Amazon minus the price for a new release hardcover Kindle book at Amazon) that would be 360$--about the price of the reader.

Regarding the destroying your library by dropping your reader issue--supposedly Amazon keeps the Kindle books a user buys online so they can be downloaded again if necessary. Plus if you don't like to leave your library in Amazon's hands (understandable) the device also takes SD cards.

I still have all kinds of questions, like whether the wireless connection to the Sprint cell phone data network covers rural Tennessee, and whether you can transfer books from the internal memory to the SD card--if you do, will the SD card work in a friend's Kindle? and whether the USB connectivity thing will work with a Mac and so on.

But it doesn't look like a hopelessly bad deal.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

text and html (not pdf or pdb or .lit files though) files

See, that would be a problem for me, with an accumulated batch of .pdb files; I imagine folks who have accumulated the other formats (except .pdf, which is more likely to be encountered online as free files meant for print formatting).

10$ for the hardcovers; the paperback releases are cheaper

It took me a moment (I just wakened prior to work) to parse that; I gather, after rereading, that refers to the timing of a purchase relative to a book's release. (That is, price depends on what the current version of the book in the mass market is.)

Still, if you're going to front-load the cost of the reader so heavily, I think there should be a massive discount on the books. My preference, as I noted, is to do it the other way around, and reduce the reader's price (until it becomes a commodity) and anticipate continuing revenue from releases.

As I said, not a disaster, but not, I think, a workable machine/system (along with the ebooks) in its current form.

[mneme]

To be fair, there's a lot of conversion available (certainly for pdb "Doc" files) -- which are usually just text wrapped in a palm-specific database format). PDFs are more of a problem (as they are a much better conversion target than source; I usually convert word files to pdfs when doing ebook conversion, as they're much smaller than word files, more reliable, and I can size the resulting pdf for my reader's screen; there is pdf->html conversion, but it's mostly bad).

As long as the reader can read open formats, the question of book price is fairly open -- the Kindle is designed to sell ebooks (via the convenience of the ubiquitous networking and, I expect, Amazon's effective cross-advertising tech), but someone can make a decision to get a read with the assumption, correct or incorrect, that most of their reading material will be free.

OTOH, that's one thing that will keep the prices of open-format readers up for a while -- if the publishers can't assume buyers will purchase books through the, they cannot use book purchase to substantially subsidize reader costs.

[sodyera.livejournal.com]

The electrobook won't be practical until we get the same instant-newspapers as in Tom Cruise's movie "Minority Report". The technology already exists; there is a material in development that feels like cloth or paper but can hold computerised images that can be electronically upgraded. No data about affordability but it is out there.

So The practical electrobook will probably end up looking vaguely like a paperback (or a travel CD holder) but made with such aforementioned pages, and probably include a memory stick that will allow you to choose titles, turn pages, scroll back and forth, yadda, yadda, yadda.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I saw the movie but don't remember the instant newspapers.

It is apparently possible to subscribe to a number of newspapers and magazines on the Kindle, (I think for a modest saving over the paper subscription price) if that's what you meant.

[sodyera.livejournal.com]

It's the chase scene when Tom gets off of the wall-crawling cars and takes a metro train. He watches the passengers and suddenly, the newspapers people are reading update their headlines with his picture as the lead story. The movie's full of future media tricks like that.

[singing-phoenix.livejournal.com]

The hefty price tag is only one disincentive...

Not to sound like a Luddite, but my eyes are strained enough by all the reading I already do off of various screens. Yes, I can use bigger font sizes and adjusted contrast, etc., but then it drives me crazy having to read only small blocks of print at a time. I'm a scanner in my reading habits...but the demo suggests the device shows you only 1-2 respectably sized paragraphs at a time.

No margin notes, no underlining of favorite passages, or being able to find a passage I want to reread because I remember its location in the physical book. I can't tell you how often I go back to reread specific passages of a book - an idiosyncrasy this little wonder seems unlikely to accommodate. (Book falls open to well-loved passage vs. user clicks through 100 pages looking for same. No contest.)

Nope, not for me, thanks...

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Erg. Not to sound like a total defender of the product or anything, but according to the material on the web about the Kindle the user

1) *can* highlight passages and type in notes about them (the equivalent of writing in the margin, more or less).
2) can search the content of the book (or all books on the device), so if you remember a phrase from the passage you want to reread you should be set.
3 can bookmark a particular passage in the book, so 2 doesn't matter all that much unless you're looking for something you didn't know you would want when you read it.

There are things I worry about with this product that may make it a bad deal, and I'm going to hold off and watch for the reviews, but I notice that a lot of the argument I read about it appears to be about disadvantages people think any e-book reader will have, rather than disadvantages the Kindle actually has.

We can fix that

[a-phoenix-afire.livejournal.com]

It would be a simple matter to program a plugin that would keep track of how long you spend on each page, or allow you to fold down a corner. We could even allow annotations like writing notes in the margins, underlining in pen or highlighting in yellow marker to accommodate such proclivities.

Also. can't these things be made the standard size of a paperback, and then use the same size font in full screen mode, with shortcut keys for paging and bookmarking?

I'm unfamiliar with the existing devices, but I have to wonder why such obvious features aren't standard when a large chunk of their target audience is people who are used to just such visceral properties.

It's a balmy 45 degrees here in turkey land. How's the insurrection where you are? Driving your own SUV yet? ;-)