Could you elaborate on this? I would have thought that either the books have an electronic license or they don’t.
That’s interesting, it looks a little clunky to me, but I love the fact that it’s tied directly to Amazon.
I had a chance to see Sony’s most recent Reader demonstrated in September - I absolutely loved it. I got one for my dad for his birthday in October since he loves to read and travels frequently for business. The screen techology is brilliant - it doesn’t look like a “computer” screen at all, it really looks like paper.
The only real drawbacks I could see to the Sony Reader were:
- A little flicker when the page turns, it’s disorienting the first 2-3 page turns, then I didn’t notice it anymore.
- I think the page forward button should be bigger and easier to push (sometimes, I would push backwards by accident)
- Wish it were easier to load up pdfs and other text based media
I do a lot of business traveling too, so it’s on my wish list for Christmas. It definitely wouldn’t replace “real” books for me on a regular basis, but it would be great to just take the Reader instead of lugging 3-4 library books I have to make space for in my luggage/carry on and then bring back with me! I am crossing my fingers that I have been just nice (and naughty enough ;)) for Santa to bring me a Reader. I think it is so cool 
We do live in an awesome time - can’t wait to see what the technology is like in 5 years!
I’d rather not elaborate too much.
Some ebook software doesn’t care much about the source of the file.
I think the reader is pretty cool, but it’s still missing lots of important features.
The automatic (and included) cell network connection is a big selling point. Backing up your purchases on Amazon.com so you don’t have to rebuy your stuff when your reader gets broken or lost is really important. And, obviously, the eInk lets the battery last for a long long time, and the display works in full light.
But there are still so many barriers to a mass-market eReader that this does nothing to solve. It’s way too expensive. Looking at the prices for books on Amazon, the actual price of most of the new hardcover books is around $15. Of course, they display the “List price” when comparing to the Kindle price. At $5/savings per book, you have to buy 80 books to break even on the reader. You can’t loan the books to anyone, or resell them. And, of course, you have to buy a new Kindle when your current one dies, or you’ve just lost all those books, since the DRM almost certainly won’t be interoperable with anything else.
Call me when I can get something like this for $100, and when I can resell the eBooks, and I’ll be interested.
I can read “books” on my pda. It’s not really that different. So no, I won’t be buying a separate appliance just for reading ebooks.
Personally, I think this is really cool. I couldn’t care less about the price of the e-books, because I doubt I’ll be buying them. The exciting thing, to me, is the possibility of being able to carry around a huge number of court opinions, journal articles, and so on in a convenient, searchable format. My big gripe with Sony’s reader is that it wouldn’t let me scrawl marginalia in any cases I read on it, or search, but the Kindle has those problems licked. Sure, it’ll cost ten cents to email documents to my Kindle - but what the heck, it’s only ten cents. If that really starts to bother me, I’m sure I could pay for as many documents emailed to my reader as I wanted just by keeping an eye out for loose change. Or I could transfer my files over a USB cable - according to one of the comments on Amazon’s Kindle page, that will still be free.
This still can’t replace real books for recreational reading, of course - I’m not going to take my $400 e-book reader to the beach. But this thing looks genuinely useful - and I find the gadget’s utter lack of sexiness endearing. 
[Hijack]IME, iTunes costs quite a bit less than hard copies – say, $9.99 for a $15 album. Plus you can buy single songs.[/Hijack]
Otherwise, any idea how readable the display is? Obviously computer displays won’t work for a novel, but it looks like the Kindle is a bit different.
To me personally, this signifies a big step towards what I experience is the trend of the 00’s and what will be even more obvious in the coming years: mankind’s ambition to collect all existing culture in accessible, digital form.
I don’t see myself buying this device - I admit that I read a lot on-line, but computer reading involves conversing with friends as well as listening to music. It’s usually also a lighter form of reading. Reading good fiction however, is an intimate communication in a medium that has already been perfected. In short, I am very intrigued by the possibilites this could bring to the literary community (and perhaps research faculties?), but I will hang onto my Penguin classics.
I had been playing with getting a tiny 13’’ Mac laptop after Christmas. I think I will get one of these instead and give myself credit for $600 in savings.
There are actually a couple of ‘killer apps’ in this thing that people aren’t really talking about, but should.
The first is the free Wikipedia access. That’s huge. Wikipedia has become a massive repository of knowledge, and having the ability to reference it for free from anywhere that has cell coverage is a big deal.
The second is the newspaper/blog access. A buck a month for a blog, or a few bucks a month for a newspaper is a good deal. You’re getting free wireless access to it 24/7. The hassle factor is zero. Get up in the morning, sit down in front of breakfast with the reader and read the paper. No synchronization with the PC, no USB cables. Take it on the train or bus, and read the latest updates. If I had this, I could cancel our newspaper and save $20/mo. The thing would pay for itself in two years just for that alone.
Finally, the ability to store your books in the ‘cloud’. This means you can access them anywhere, and don’t need to keep them on the device. Amazon becomes your repository. No worries about backups, either. And you can read your own books on multiple devices at the same time. Today, when we buy a new book, my wife or I get to read it first, and the other has to wait. Now you can buy a book, and both of you can read at the same time. That’s pretty cool. You can sync it to something like 5 devices, so you can even share the cost of books with friends.
And they got the content pricing right. $9.99 for a new release is a reasonable savings over a print copy of the book. Add in the convenience of instant delivery, and that makes e-books attractive.
All that said, it’s still priced to high. A company as big as Amazon should have taken a cue from the game console manufacturers and sold the device at a small loss, with the intent of recouping the cost on content sales. This thing needs to be $200 or less to make any kind of inroads in the mass market. For it to gain mass acceptance quickly, it should be $99.95, with 5 free books. That’s the price point that will grab impulse buyers and even people who never intended to get an e-book reader but see it being essentailly free as compared to buying five hardcover books. They’d sell millions at that price. And they’d lose a couple of hundred million bucks, but they’d own the e-book market.
I haven’t seen the screen display of the Kindle, but I did play around quite a bit with the Sony Reader which uses the same Eink technology. The screen looks different from a computer screen, it really looks like paper. My eyes didn’t get tired staring at the screen, it had the right brightness. There is a little “flicker” when the page turns, the E-ink technology works a bit like an etch a sketch. It bugged me for about a minute, then I quit noticing the flicker.
I spent the day reading a ton about the Kindle, and now I’m torn between the Kindle and the Reader.
The Reader
Pros - device is cheaper, a little lighter, possible to use USB cable to transfer word doc, text files and pdfs from your PC to the Reader, can download free books from Project Gutenberg. Work docs and blogs can be saved and imported.
Cons - no wireless, no newspapers, no magazines subscriptions. Black & white
Kindle
Pros - very easy to download books from Amazon, free Wikipedia, cheaper books, tons of online storage, friends can email files (small cost), magazine/newspaper/blog subscription, instant access to book purchases
Cons - Device is more expensive, can’t transfer files from PC to device, costs .10 to email a file, black & white
Since I will have to use it with a USB connected tot he internet (as I will not be in an area served by the wireless service), your analysis would point me to the Sony. On the other hand, the Sony store is much more expensive, and I suppose limited. If you want new mainline titles both would work, but Amazon has more chance to get the odd stuff.
Also I question the value of Project Gutenberg. The titles are of course quite old. My real-book collection has only a couple of titles. from there.
The price difference in $100 (I think). You could make that up with a half-dozen purchases at the cheaper Amazon price.
Maybe later. I like physical books, but see the utility for reference materials. However, when that electromagnetic pulse wipes everything and/or electricity doesn’t work, I’ll be glad to have my paper copies of the Foxfire books.
That’s kind of the point.
Project Gutenberg served up about three and a half million downloads in the last month - I wish my own website was of of similarly questionable value.
I read ebooks on my palm which cost me about $250 to buy so I won’t be buying the kindle either.
Baen books has a free library with about 100 books. They aren’t proctected in any way and as long as you don’t sell them they don’t care what you do with them. Heck they occasionally throw cds with free ebooks on em in some of the new hardcovers they publish.
Baen and a couple other companies also sell books at Webscriptions And they aren’t protected either. Plus, If you buy a book and lose your copy you can go to your account and re download it free.
Publishers are scum. going from my experience in the publishing industry from the 1980’s: Authors get maybe $1 per book, it costs maybe $1 per book, hardcover add $1 per book, and yet the publishers basically want to charge the same amount as a paper book that has to be printed, shipped, stocked, etc. On line books should be maybe 50% of the price of a paperback.
I’ve got at least 20-30 books from the Baen library I carry around on my 2 gig USB drive.
With that and Project Gutenberg there’s plenty of material to put on a reader without needing to purchase a thing yet.
I wish they would come out with something like the Everybook that Khadaji mentioned. The screen on the Kindle just looks too small so the text won’t come in a big enough bite to be satisfying.
edit to close my tag
People at the Amazon site are now making reports on their new toys. (Previously they were just guessing.) Most people who have one seem to like it so far.
For me the big attraction of an e-reader is the ability to free up about ten cubic metres of house space, and to have every book I own with me at all times. Once they get the DRM, compatability and pricing issues sorted I can see myself getting one, even at twice the price (I paid nearly $400 for an IPod, and I read more than I listen to music). Kindle 2.0, 3.0 or a competitor product is probably what I’ll end up with, but the probably isn’t quite done cooking yet.
I just read a pretty definitive list of why not to purchase a Kindle. I wasn’t contemplating getting one, but now I have a new reason. The same reason I wouldn’t purchase music from iTunes prior to their deal with EMI to sell DRM free music.
As posted on Boing Boing Amazon has gone all DRM on this thing. I’ll wait for an open source book reader, or just keep reading my e-books on my Treo or PC thanks.