Kindle still seems unnecessary
Amazon has released a new Kindle. It costs $359. I don’t know why anyone would buy that piece of crippleware when you can buy a netbook for the same price or cheaper and get unlimited functionality. (I suppose if I had experienced the magic of the Kindle’s no-backlight technology, I wouldn’t dismiss it so glibly.) Even in his effort to champion the device, Joel Johnson reveals its inherent limitations: “While the new model now has 2 gigabytes of memory onboard, seven times as much as the old Kindle in storage terms, it no longer has the SD flash memory card slot that made it possible to keep a library of tens of thousands of books on the device at once. While my library never really grew that big (having even a few hundred books began to make getting around in the menus somewhat awkward), knowing it could went a long way towards tickling my desire for the world’s entire written history to be in my pocket at all times.” The Kindle is not apparently meant to be the book that subsumes all books; it appears to become clumsier to use the more you load onto it. In practice, it seems a novelty gadget for travelers who want respite from their laptops, but are too indecisive to settle on what book to bring on the plane.
At the Guardian’s blog, Bobbie Johnson makes this apt point about the Kindle’s modest success (via PSFK):
Everyone’s looking at the pattern they’ve seen in music and video - an old medium changed radically by technology - and waiting for it to hit the book world. But the chances of that happening right now are very small indeed. Why? It’s fairly straightforward.
The real reason that the music industry came around to the idea of downloads wasn’t because they had a startling insight into the future, or even because Apple forced the issue by building a clever ecosystem around the iPod (it didn’t launch the iTunes store until 2003). It was because customers were choosing to pirate instead.
That seems right to me. And the reason people aren’t pirating books isn’t because the opportunity isn’t there—you can probably find torrents for pdfs of Harry Potter and those Twilight books if you wanted them. It’s that people have other more convenient ways to share books. As Johnson explains, “the average book reader isn’t turning to legally dubious sources for their novels, or meeting up with book dealers on street corners to pick up copies of the latest bestseller. If they want to share files, they can get somebody to lend them a copy, or go to a place for sharing this information that’s wholly supported by the industry (you might know them as libraries).”
Basically publishers have no incentive to encourage people to read books on screens and every incentive to get them to enjoy the fetish of the object. The preference consumers have shown for digitized music and iPods doesn’t seem to translate to books. The usefulness of the iPod derives from its ability to shuffle songs that many people enjoy as background, more or less passively. On the subway I hear about a dozen songs each morning, and it pleases me that they are randomly selected from a list of several thousand. But I wouldn’t want my reading material served up that way. Generally I’m reading one thing at a time, and I benefit from the finality of that decision, when I leave home with one book. Books have the great built-in advantage of preventing me from surfing away elsewhere when the reading becomes arduous or requires an effort of concentration.
Comments
Yup. Plus, it’s ugly.
Comment by Chris Furniss from seattle — February 10, 2009 @ 4:11 pm
Trust me; the non-backlighting thing is huge. As is the ability to download free book samples (approx. 1 chapter) from Amazon. It’s saved me from buying a number of books that turned out to be crap.
Comment by Virtual Memories from Ringwood, NJ — February 10, 2009 @ 6:43 pm
“The usefulness of the iPod derives from its ability to shuffle songs that many people enjoy as background, more or less passively.”...
That’s ONE useful reason ipods are popular, not the only one. Ipods are useful for cataloging, searching and playing songs. The Kindle does the same for books. It’s also a heck of lot easier to download a cd, or book, than to go to a store to buy it. Another benefit that the Kindle provides is searchability. Still another is weight (especially for book lovers/users with large libraries who move every so often, this is potentially huge).
I think that the Kindle problem is pricing. Not only the maching, but the content. Often the digital editions are more expensive than the paperbacks. The key to Kindle success is a pricing scheme, but once they figure it out, it’ll take off.
Comment by Michael from us — February 15, 2009 @ 3:18 pm
Yeah I totally got my IPOD for the shuffle feature, not for its ability to store thousands of songs in one compact space that allows me to choose from my entire collection at anytime. Surely the ability to render my collection of cd’s as transportable as my wallet, is trumped by shuffle play.
Comment by Phil — February 15, 2009 @ 3:36 pm
I’ve owned a Kindle for about a year. It has changed the way I buy books, the way I carry multiple books, the feel of the object I’m holding while reading, and the motion I use to turn the page. It hasn’t changed the way I read at all. I occasionally have a couple of books going at a time as I always have, but I switch between them rarely. No more than before. When I travel, I carry one Kindle instead of several books. When I’m at home, I only have to remember what one thing looks like when I’m trying to remember where I left what I was reading. Once I open the cover and start reading, the technology is not there.
If you really think you’d be tempted to somehow put your books on “random play” while reading (not that the option exists), perhaps the Kindle isn’t for you. But it works pretty well for lots of us.
As someone who’s bought loads of books, records, and CDs over the years and continues to buy the words and sounds, I like that no physical objects need to exist for me to buy or enjoy either any longer. No fuel expended to shop for either, no waste left behind by the manufacturing process or from the packaging or when a book / cd is finally disposed of. I’m consuming less and less actual STUFF and that’s not a bad thing.
Comment by Ray from PA — February 15, 2009 @ 3:39 pm
While I agree that music and video companies have come to support legal downloads because of pirating concerns, I don’t think pirating is a pre-requisite for electronic media to take off. With music it made sense: the technology to rip music was free, people who spend a lot of time on their computers often listen to music, and the art of piracy is one of the easiest skills a young hacker can learn.
But the technology that fueled the change in those industries—ripping and filesharing—does not transfer to the book industry. It is extremely taxing for an individual to digitize a book, and reading large chunks of text on a computer monitor strains the eyes (not to mention the fact that computers are distracting).
If technological advance is going to change the book industry, it will have to include “digital” ink, a distraction-free interface, and a compact and lightweight design (it better not be heavier than a book). The Kindle provides these things, in the hope that avid book readers—who would never be able to read books enjoyably on a computer screen—will come to discover that reading on a Kindle isn’t so bad. If the Kindle indeed fosters that discovery, then the revolution is only a matter of pricing and time.
Comment by Rick from New York — February 15, 2009 @ 4:35 pm
I’m not a fan of the Kindle, but not because I don’t believe in the eBook evolution.
I do my reading on my iPhone, which is even more portable than the Kindle. I don’t need to have several devices to carry around. I can stay in contact, read a book or magazine and listen to music, all at the same time, on one device.
That is where the future is. I still indulge in paper books, but only when I’m home now. On the road, be it local or out of town, the iPhone works for me.
I find it so useful to be able to purchase new or download public domain material and not have to lug around a book or two.
Comment by Bernard Savoie from Montreal, Canada — February 15, 2009 @ 4:50 pm
I rarely use the shuffle feature on my iPod because I prefer to listen to whole albums. If I had a Kindle, I’d probably still prefer to read whole books. I hate to break it to you, but some of those songs on the subway were deliberately chosen.
The advantage of having oodles of stored data at your fingertips is that you can use it any way you want to. I wish I had a Kindle when I was in grad school—checking that quote from Hesiod would have been infinitely easier. Who’s to say people with other needs won’t find ways to make the Kindle meet them?
The whole argument against e-books strikes me as a failure of imagination. Lots of people thought the internet and the horseless carriage were ill-considered fads too.
Comment by Decline and Fall from Portland, Oregon — February 15, 2009 @ 5:18 pm
I have owned the sony reader and the kindle, and have kindle 2 on order. Both are fantastic products, and I’ve never met someone who actually owned one who did not like them. To be sure there is a somewhat narrow customer base for whom it works at this pricepoint. You have to read a lot..I read a couple of books a week..and am always always reading something, book, blog, paper, whatever. I travel a lot, which makes having something to read on a plane hugely valuable. So I love it, and it is well suited for me. I think most of the critiques come both from people who don’t have one and who don’t really read a lot. Now, that’s not bad, its just that the device appeals to obsessive readers, and I think a lot of reviewers don’t get that. If you are an obsessive reader you will love it. That said, the kindle 1, with all its flaws, had a couple of advantages on the 2. And sony’s latest reader I had to return, they put a touchscreen on it that degraded the viewing quality, and it just was not good enough. I wish these guys were going fully forward instead of backward, but I guess that is the joy of seeing a new market develop.
Comment by Birniguy from USA — February 15, 2009 @ 8:12 pm
This is a dumb argument and a dumb reason to not purchase the kindle. Buy one. Or even borrow one for just a day before you decide. The very best part, and the part you seem to be overlooking, is the ability to immediately, wirelessly download anything you could ever want to read, wherever you are - no syncing, no wires, no service fees for the connection, no finding a wifi (it uses the cellphone network). It isn’t like walking around with just one book. It is like walking around with potentially the entire library of Congress at your command. Or just an article someone mentioned in the New Yorker.
You’re thinking about this all wrong. You can’t compare the Kindle to an iPod, because iPods don’t allow you to purchase songs and get them immediately - any song you might want, at any moment. (But I bet Apple is working on that now!) To get a song on an iPod when not at your computer, you’d have to boot up your laptop, buy the song (and you’d have to find a wifi connection first), and plug in your iPod and sync it. On the kindle, you turn on the wireless connection (wireless as in, Sprint’s phone network, so it works wherever a cell phone works, which is pretty much anywhere), go to the search page, locate your book, click ‘purchase’, and seconds later you have the entire book.
Comment by KLW from NY — February 15, 2009 @ 9:23 pm
“I don’t know why anyone would buy that piece of crippleware…”
“I suppose if I had experienced…”
When I was little I read a book called “The Phantom Tollbooth.” In it the main character ends up, like Rob, on the Isle of Conclusions in the usual way.
“But how did we get here?” asked Milo, who was still a bit puzzled by being there at all.
“You jumped, of course,” explained Canby. “That’s the way most everyone gets here. It’s really quite simple: every time you decide something without having a good reason, you jump to Conclusions whether you like it or not. It’s such an easy trip to make that I’ve been here hundreds of times.”
Comment by Visitor — February 15, 2009 @ 9:28 pm
The key differentiator, for me, is that with my iPod I’m not limited to an either/or choice. I started my Itunes library by importing the music from 50 or so CDs I already owned (many purchased used); when I purchase music from the iTunes store I can burn a music CD that will work in any CD player I encounter. Not so with Kindle: if I buy a Kindle book I have just that, a Kindle book; and the contents of my half-dozen bookshelves will never see an ebook reader unless I repurchase them. That, to me, is the huge limiter on ebook growth; where I could fool around with digital music, I’d have to marry Kindle.
Comment by BubbaDave — February 16, 2009 @ 12:26 am
KLW: <i> The very best part, and the part you seem to be overlooking, is the ability to immediately, wirelessly download anything you could ever want to read, wherever you are ... It isn’t like walking around with just one book. It is like walking around with potentially the entire library of Congress at your command.</i>
At the risk of sounding pretentious, no, I <i>can’t</i> download anything I could ever want to read. In fact, of the last 20 books I’ve read - thank you, Goodreads, for helping me keep track - only five are available as Kindle books. David Foster Wallace’s <i>Consider the Lobster</i>? Not a Kindle book. The high-school English class perennial <i>A Separate Peace</i>? Not a Kindle book. <i>Any</i> of James Baldwin’s novels? Not Kindle books. Nobel and Booker Prize winners like Kenzaburo Oe or Penelope Fitzgerald? Nope. Two of my favorite music writers, Greil Marcus and Peter Guralnick? One Kindle book apiece. And nothing by Flannery O’Connor or Raymond Carver.
I don’t think I’m reading particularly strange or obscure books here, and maybe the Kindle is a more attractive tool if you’re reading more contemporary stuff.
Also, as Michael points out above, the pricing of Kindle books leaves something to be desired, mostly because the system is very inconsistent and because, in my case, I could easily get my books from the library or from used bookstores for a few dollars.
I’m also one of those people who likes the objects themselves. There’s something about being able to browse my bookshelves and say, “I’ve read these,” or ask myself, “Which one do I want to read next?” Of course, it’s only been in the last year or so that I’ve really tried to wean myself off of physical CDs, so maybe I’m just a little old fashioned.
Comment by Tom Useted from Austin, Texas — February 16, 2009 @ 12:55 pm
That’s a good point about the availability of books on the Kindle. I couldn’t get Lolita. I don’t think that is going to be an enduring issue though. As Kindle use picks, book availability will likewise pick up.
I disagree with the comparisons to music catalogs. They are apples and oranges. We listen to music over and over again. I don’t think I’m unusual in that I read most books only once. I don’t have any desire to transfer my entire current book collection to my Kindle; I am fine with using it for the books that I read from this point forward. I would liken this more to movies. You may have some old VHS tapes sitting around, and for a while you probably even kept your VHS player, but you probably didn’t have a problem with buying new movies as DVDs. There will be even less resistance to the Kindle format than there was to DVDs - because your old versions of books will always work and you don’t need to keep 2 machines around. I also love books, and I plan to always have a good number of them on the shelves. But I don’t have to have every book I’ve ever read on display.
Pricing, availability and ease of use will work themselves out. I was a skeptic - my husband bought ours originally - but I was converted within 5 minutes. I envision the classics (new and old) always coming out in lovely hard cover editions, so that people can keep them on shelves (and it is important for children to grow up around books) so there will always be some demand for the real thing. But try the Kindle out for a week and you’ll realize it is here to stay.
Comment by KLW — February 16, 2009 @ 1:17 pm
I think perhaps some of you are taking Rob’s comment about the Shuffle function a little too literally. Surely the draw of the iPod is that it allows you to switch between artists/albums/songs when you want (not just actual shuffle option that switches bands after every song). I don’t see why a similar capability would be necessary for books, other than to save a bit of packing space on holidays. Generally, you’re only going to need one book per journey to work, or whatever.
That said, the attraction of the Kindle is (inevitably) objective. Sure, it’ll take off to an extent, but I can hardly see it reaching iPod levels simply because I don’t think its a product as many people will feel they need in their lives. iPod’s are handy even for people who don’t download music; the Kindle isn’t of the slightest use to people who don’t download books.
Comment by Chris — March 2, 2009 @ 1:15 pm
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