Amazon's Kindle Makes Me Read More

So when the Amazon Kindle was first announced I was immediately intrigued. eBook readers have been something that seemed like a great idea from the beginning – at least to me. I had some problems with the earlier models – price, availability of content, and my #1 issue: The fact that electronic books weren’t cheaper than their paper counterparts. Truth is that a book doesn’t cost THAT much to manufacture but the related distribution costs, retail overhead, etc, adds up to a premium that downloads just didn’t have to deal with. I wanted the eBooks to be cheaper than the paper books and Sony’s store (and others previous like Audible) didn’t agree. Amazon did.

The Kindle has been panned for its industrial design. It has been criticized for its price point. I am not an overwhelming fan of the photography of it so far but honestly everyone that sees it says “oh, it isn’t that bad.” Functionality wise the side buttons allowing for previous and next page movement are quite convenient. The keyboard is a bit awkward but you only use it for very specific tasks, which I’ll get to later. In general it is light and easy to hold. I think the design is a personal preference thing and less of a serious hindrance to actually using it. (Note: I’ve read recent articles talking about how Amazon should license the Kindle store out to other manufacturers of hardware so they can stick to what works for them. This is genius and I agree whole heartedly… because…)

 

The integration with the Amazon store is amazing. Take first just the integration of it online, via the web, where you can easily search for and find, then buy, any book that has a Kindle edition. Most of the best sellers (91 out of 100 or so) have Kindle editions (a modified Mobicreator format) and are easily purchased. Amazon does one thing right – that’s work pricing and convenience down to a science. They’ve got it right here once again. THEN consider the integration at the device level. There’s nothing extra to do to get the content to your Kindle other than turn it on and let it wirelessly download via the Amazon Whispernet (EVDO) access. A truly genius move was to make that wireless access free. You’re paying for it as part of each download but you don’t notice, hence you don’t care. Smart. The emotional ease of buying more content will lead to higher sales in the long run guaranteed.

 

So what is it like to read on it? Personally I feel that it is better than reading on paper because of the variety of content piped into one small device, the ability to search interactively, and the resizing of text. The contrast of the screen is more than adequate and will only get better over time. I think the placement of the buttons is fine and useful, haven’t had an issue with them yet. I’ve found myself reading MORE because of the kindle, and that’s great. Given I’m reading more of my always loved sci-fi and futurist novels, but reading anything is good ;) 

 

So what’s the keyboard for? You can search the Amazon store right from the device, complete with rankings by bestsellers, price, and even reviews which strike a rather personal chord with me. You can search through the texts of what you’ve got on the device. You can browse the web even – albeit not flawlessly – and hit sites like Wikipedia and news organizations. It is useful in a pinch but by no means a replacement for a laptop, iPhone, iPod Touch, Nokia tablet, or any other wifi enabled real browser. 

 

And what about the storage? First off it has 250mb or so of internal storage that seems to work just fine for me. I’ve got a dozen books, a few magazines, lots of newspapers (various days of the WSJ or Investors Business Daily) and have no problems so far. Also you can add SD cards to increase the storage at will. Even more slick is the Amazon store holds references to your purchases and can retransfer them to the Kindle at any time. Take note iTunes – this is something that annoys the hell out of me when I buy a song and then have to worry about losing it. 

 

My opinion is positive on the Kindle. I like it, I’m using it almost daily, and I am reading a lot more for it. I want to see more titles available on the Kindle store and improvements in the future to the eInk technology. Supposedly there’s some new stuff at CES ;)

Comments

[Kindle Store]

More titles? They're a coming.
Only 6 months ago, Amazon was boasting of how the Kindle Store already has over 170,000 books.

Now it's up to 230,000 (Mar 2009). That works out to 10,000 books digitized per month!