Yes, I finally broke down and bought a Kindle. I figured that I could keep it for a week and if I don’t like it, send it back within Amazon’s 30 day window.
I’m not sending it back. I’m keeping it.
It’s awesome.
And not just because you can buy my novel on it – though you can, and of course I encourage you to do so – but because this has done for reading what the iPod has done for listening to music.
Reading on the device is not a superior experience to reading a traditional paper book. The background of the screen is a grey that should actually be a brilliant white – technology is going to have to catch up here – but I did find I was able to read comfortably enough to forget I was holding a device instead of paper.
Where the device is superior is the fact that it’s connected, on demand and for free, to the Internet through a build-in cellular link. And it’s not that surfing the Internet on it is wonderful (I’d much rather do that on my iPhone if I’m out and about) but it’s that you can peruse and read the first chapters of thousand upon thousands of books, at a whim, searching for something that grabs you enough to read the whole book.
That is the genius of this device.
It will never completely replace a paper book, just like a iPod never replaced something with external speakers. It won’t kill book stores, especially places like Borders (my favorite) because people will always love to go and hang out there.
However, it may force them to evolve. A book store ten years from now may be a completely different place than what you find today. It may be more like a Starbucks, more like a hangout, where people who love to read come together and congregate, discuss, and fondle expensive collector’s editions with fancy binding and acid-free paper.
Perhaps customers will buy eBooks for their Kindle (or equivalent) on little cards that have codes on the back. Or maybe there will be big wall-mounted touch screens where you scroll through them and press “Buy Now” – after which it gets downloaded immediately to your device.
One thing for sure, is that with the advent of the Kindle 2, the eBook reader has finally become a fixture instead of a curiosity. One can only guess at the improvements on the Kindle 3, and also the rumors are flying that Apple will be coming out with something that, while not a dedicated eBook reader, can be used as one.
Here’s a bit of irony. High praise for the Kindle coming from none other than Bill Gates: "Lately, Jeff’s [Bezos] pioneering spirit has taken him in some new directions. He would like nothing more than to be the first to provide a cheap and safe way for anyone to fly into space and started a company called Blue Origin to devise the technology. That’s pretty cool, but his biggest legacy of all might be more down to earth — a modest-looking white-and-silver digital device called the Kindle. This electronic book is Jeff’s brainchild and may well revolutionize not only how we acquire books and periodicals but also how bookworms like me actually read them. That would put him in the same ranks as Johannes Gutenberg."
Why is this ironic? Because under the hood, the Kindle is running Linux.
Posted on May 1st, 2009
I keep reading articles like this one: Kindle Apps Won’t Beat Tablets
