I’ve been eyeing the Amazon Kindle 2 and I’ve convinced myself it’s a pretty decent bit of technology, albeit a little pricey.
However, I’ve also been doing little experiments where I search for a book that I would like to read or re-read and I find it’s not available. I know Amazon claims to have more than 249,000 titles available, but when I pick a category and browse through it, I get the feeling of deja vu from the old days of Columbia House records. What I remember from that was, by the time you filtered out the re-issues and the stuff you didn’t care for, each catalog had darned few selections. If you wanted an album that was on a label they didn’t carry, you still had to go to the store.
I’m also reminded of another Columbia House relic. About half the books that pique my interest are the $14.99 books instead of the the $9.99 books.
So, my question is, for those of you that have had the Kindle 1 for a year or so, are you running short of available books that you think are worth $9.99.
I’m a cheapskate who owns a Kindle (v. 1) only because a friend gave me one. As a cheapskate, most of what I have on it is public domain stuff, which is available at several websites (Project Gutenberg, Feedbooks, manybooks.net) for free. It’s a useful gizmo for travelers and commuters, but I’m still reading more physical books than Kindle books (after six months).
So – my advice to anyone who’s on the fence – if you aren’t sure if you want/need one, you probably don’t.
I going on a vacation next month (yay!). On my last vacation, I spent about $150 on books and took up about half a suitcase. Plus, I had to pay the airline $50.00 for the overweight suitcase. So, while I don’t travel much, the Kindle does have some appeal for me.
But, two of the books that I used for a test case are Shirer’s *Rise and Fall of the Third Reich *and Michener’s Space. I have them in paperback, but they’re thick and unwieldy - the Kindle would be the answer to that problem. But, neither is available. These aren’t exactly obscure books.
We got our first kindle when they came out in November 2007. Since that time, we’ve bought around 200 kindle books. Maybe a total around $2000 more or less. If we had purchased actual books, that figure would’ve been more like $4-6000. Plus, we don’t have the space to store books. The kindle is a win-win situation for us–so much that I bought another for myself. I know when we first got the kindle, they noted that they had about 90,000 titles. Less than a year and a half later, it’s up to almost 250,000. So, I think it will continue to increase.
If it is important to you that specific books be available on Kindle, you’ll probably be disappointed. If you’re asking if there is all kinds of entertaining reading material – and more every day – the answer to that is yes.
I’ve no had any problem with finding things I want to read. No, not everything is available but then that was sort of true before because while I would want to read 100 books I’d only ever remember to think about buying 10 of them. Now I at least look for all 100.
But if you have pretty specific reading requirements then yeah it is definitely something you want to check out before buying one.
Amazon is at the mercy of publishers, however, to be able to offer the books. And it is true that the easiest avenue to Amazon’s library growth is in the area of books that not many people will want (99% of possible public domain titles are things that only specialized scholars would want to read).
Twickster, thanks. I was really just using those two books as test case. I doesn’t make sense (yet) for me to spend money on books I already have. Plus, the Kindle would be a good impetus for me to expand my horizons a little.
Hellpaso, in the checking I’ve done so far, the 250,000 number is likely inflated. For example, they have eight different editions of Ben Franklin’s autobiography. I bet they’re couting that as eight different books.
Obfuciatrist, you bring up a good point. By the time I’ve read the the things that catch my eye right now, the list may be expanded.
Again – don’t get too hung up on the ten-bucks-a-pop thing – if you enjoy novels, there’s plenty of good public domain fiction (not just Dickens! – Edith Wharton, F. Scott Fitzgerald, etc.) available free. I’ve got a slew of Sherlock Holmes short stories that are nice for quick reads in between other things when I’m out and about with the Kindle.
If you travel a lot, I would definitely encourage you to not get too hung up on what’s not available.
Of course it depends on your specific taste. And some authors have refused to let their books be published in the Kindle format (notably J.K. Rowling and John Grisham).
But overall, of new books (published within the last year) I’ve been able to find about 90% on the Kindle. Going back further it’s more hit-and-miss.
I’ve easily been able to find enough books to read that I am not running out.
I’ll echo some of the others…the 250,000 are the books amazon SELLS. There are plenty of free (or alternate pay) sites that can vastly increase the number of books available. On a Mac at least, it is trivially easy to convert books purchased or downloaded elsewhere to Kindle format without having to involve Amazon at all. Two free programs work really well for this that I am aware of: Stanza and Calibre. I use Stanza, and it has worked seamlessly. The only minor issue is that formatting can get a little wonky sometimes, mostly in the form of excessive dashes in the middle of words where the original ebook wrapped the word to the next line.
I’ve actually found the selection to be far greater than I anticipated when I originally got the Kindle.