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Last fall, midway through an interview with Oprah, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos claimed that his team had designed a device so much like a book that users would forget that they were reading with an expensive piece of electronics.
I didn’t believe him.
Then, late one night, I was reading on my ten-day-old Kindle while brushing my teeth. I was midway through a crucial point in a story when, just as Bezos had said, I got wrapped up in the world created on the screen. Without thinking, I sat my toothbrush on the counter and tried to turn a physical page — which didn’t exist.
I only paused for a moment to consider the significance of what had happened, but before I hit the next page button, I was a believer in this machine.
In 1631, John Winthrop the Younger crossed the Atlantic to make his home in the New World, and among his supplies on an overfull ship, he packed “a barrell of bookes.” That initial collection Winthrop couldn’t do without grew and flowered in Massachusetts, and when he died, his personal library consisted of more than 1,000 volumes. At the time, it was perhaps the greatest collection of knowledge on the American continent.
With the new Kindle 2 — unveiled this month — I can now carry a personal library of 1,500 books in my pocket, and that is fundamentally changing the nature of what, and how, I read.
Amazon offers more than 230,000 cheap, Kindle-ready books through its online store. Through the Internet at large, I have access to thousands of classics that I can download for free. What used to be a difficult calculation of what I wanted to read, balanced against the cost of a new book and the available shelf space in my apartment, has become a far more simple equation.
When I began to buy more books online (for reasons of economy and convenience), I gave up the experience of browsing and sampling that comes from visiting a library or a store. With the Kindle, that’s no longer the case. Now I download digital samples of every book that perks my interest, and keep them as long as I want for free.
For the first 20 years of my life as a reader, I focused on one book at a time, pushing myself to finish the last chapter before starting something new. With the Kindle, I’ll keep a novel going, even as I read a new biography, and if my mood changes, I’ve always got a selection of unread books waiting for my attention. It often takes me longer to finish an individual volume, but because I’m reading so many things in tandem, my overall pace remains consistent.
I still buy physical books, but I do so primarily as a collector, rather than as a reader. I’m now more comfortable spending $100 on a signed first edition of White Teeth knowing that it only cost me $10 to read this year’s Newbery Award winner. I find myself cherishing all the books that line the shelves in my apartment, because a small part of me knows each one I bring home might be my last.
Apple introduced the iPod on October 23, 2001, and its success has transformed the physical album into a relative artifact. The power of capacity, the freedom that comes with a nearly infinite choice of songs, has trumped every argument about the inherent superiority of a non-digital format.
Readers everywhere are about to face a choice about whether to opt for the same convenience when it comes to print. It’s a decision I’ve already made.
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15 Responses
I already kind of wanted one of these. Now I really want one.
It's my next materialistic purchase and I'm not a fan of materialistic stuff. My IPOD is my most valued. But this really seems like something I'd use alot and also save me loads of money long term.
"For the first 20 years of my life as a reader, I focused on one book at a time, pushing myself to finish the last chapter before starting something new. With the Kindle, I’ll keep a novel going, even as I read a new biography"
Expect the Kindle Shuffle?
i'm still not convinced. the feeling of turning a page could never be replaced by a plastic lcd screen.
But what about typography? Decisions are made design-wise that can be so connected to the material, doesn't the Kindle just strip all of that away? I don't know what the capabilities of the device are, so maybe it's possible to have other fonts or formatting. Just thinking of JR by William Gaddis, for instance. I'd miss the drawings, the formatting of lyrics, etc. that are so important to the work. And what about the charm of reading yellowed pages in an old book.
In my opinion, the problem with eBooks currently is that most emply DRM which prevents you from sharing a book, much like you would with a physical book (passing it onto a friend). The books are also all as expensive or more expensive than paperback versions, so you're only saving money on new releases that are currently available in hardcover only.
I'm not convinced yet that it's worth while to spend $360 on a device that lets me carry around overpriced digital versions of my books and magazines. With digital music, you can buy a portion of an album (ex. the song you like). With an ebook, I doubt people will buy books a chapter at a time, or newspapers and magazines an article at a time. I also don't see the real thrill in being able to carry around 1500 books (which would cost you about $15,000 since the DRM enabled books won't let you share among friends and family). Although I frequently read multiple books concurrently, I don't usually carry all of them around with me.
To me, the main benefit of the Kindle and other ebook readers is the "green" factor. Although there are no facts that I've seen on the subject, downloading a book has to be more environmentally friendly than printing them up, shipping them to stores, and driving to go buy them.
If I were Amazon, I would probably keep the price of the Kindle the same, but give each person a coupon code for 20 or so books for free to start their collection. This would basically drop the price of the reader to $160.
Sort of unrelated, does an author earn a higher percentage from ebook sales than from traditional hard copy sales? I would hope so since there is less overhead for the publisher.
mcwhite, as I understand it, Amazon IS discounting kindle books significantly (especially from hardcover prices), but paying publishers the same amount they would get for print. So they're taking a hit and effectively giving a discount to the buyer and the publisher in order to grow their market. DRM is the publisher's option.
For me personally this device doesn't make sense, but if I actually had time to read a novel or two a week, or even per month, I could see the usefulness. For the niche, it seems perfectly designed to me.
I can not imagine sinking into the curves, lines and exclamations of the yet to be read written page of a book without holding it so very close to my breath, inhaling the journey to come. I will miss the natural scent of each and every book once held since I was a child, deciding which books I want to read by a simple sniff.
[...] Read more here. [...]
[...] wasn’t too excited when I first heard about Kindle 2:, but after reading Flavorpill’s recent rave about Amazon’s new wireless reading device, I just might have to try it. According to Matt [...]
Last year when I bought a Kindle, I did not own much in the way of electronics (owned a decrepit sepia-toned color TV) and was proud of it. I was saving money towards retirement and had simple needs.
I was so thrilled with my Kindle that I bought another to gift my daughter. After buying two Kindles, I literally fell into opportunities to buy three Wii consoles. One was for me and the others were gifts. The feeling of having lost my ever loving mind was inescapable but didn't matter. When my retirement stock tanked, I figured that I could trash my money as well as the stock market. So, in November, I bought a Nintendo DS and some games for it.
Abruptly, my sense of self ceased to be defined by electronic material acquisition. I thought that it was time for this madness to stop. Everything was going along just fine until there was news of the launch of Kindle2.
Well, Kindle2 is in my grubby hands and truth to tell: its text-to-speech feature is fascinating. I'm not buying anymore electronics, though.
I'm a typography lover myself (heck, I win over my bosses when I design their publications simply by having acquired better typefaces than anyone else). And someday we'll have an e-reader that matches print typography, but in the case of the Kindle, typography isn't the point. The Kindle is a way to quickly communicate complex information without the author and reader being in the same room, just like a book does. But it currently comes with a trade-off: if you want that information in minutes (rather than ordering a book or going to a bookstore), you should be willing to sacrifice certain tactile and typographic qualities.
The discussion on this post is interesting, in that it could be replaced with almost any other discussion about a new tool. On a 1998 post about AOL Instant Messenger, someone could have said, "But what about looking into someone's eyes? An emoticon can't capture actual emotions." Or earlier, "But what about imagination? Won't the television take all the wonder out of what we've come to expect from radio?" Yet instant messaging and TV found their niche, thrived, and the Kindle may thrive too, in it's own niche.
It's not going to replicate the feeling of viewing an illuminated manuscript. But it just may save a couple hundred dollars a year in novels that you'd read on the subway.
[...] Read more: Flavorwire » Blog Archive » The Future of Books: Why the Kindle Is … [...]
Ebook readers are not only change the nature of what, and how, we read. I think we are close to revolution in library system because eReaders open another dimension for share of information on public level. It potentially extends amount of content available in any library, therefore the way of providing/processing.
I just gotta say I love my kindle and the cheap books.
My taste is a bit rough but I enjoyed "The Misogynist" by Emily Downs. It's only a dollar for a new artist with great talent.
It can be a bit vulgar at times. Be warned. But it's cheap.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Misogynist/dp/B001V5J4V...
She is the bestselling author of "Lisa Loves Girls"
http://www.amazon.com/Lisa-Loves-Girls-ebook/dp/B...
2 books for under 2 bucks. THe kindle will own publishing.