Will the Kindle light your reading fire?

Nov 24 2007

The release of Amazon’s ebook reading device has been out for a few days now, and many blogs I’ve read already gave their two cents. I have been hesitant to throw in my own opinion because I haven’t actually held the Kindle and took it for a test drive myself.

But for what its worth, the release of the Amazon Kindle is a good sign. It means that reading digital material is catching on, especially as more and more people realize that they’re already reading gobs of digital material already (ie. email, blogs, online articles, etc), so reading novels in digital format isn’t really a large leap.

However, not all is good and dandy in the world of ebooks. There are problems, very obvious problems, that keep ebooks and the devices these large corporations peddle to the us as readers that continue to plague the market. Here’s a rundown of those problems as I see them:

DRM is the devil
Okay, so maybe Digital Rights Management is not the prince of darkness, but in ebook-land, DRM is holding back the true power of ebooks. For example, I bought the Sony Reader back in March. While it’s a great device, it is very limited in its functionality. The books I buy from the Sony Connect store are great and easy to read. But they will never work on the Amazon Kindle, and Amazon’s own ebooks will never work on the Sony Reader.

Furthermore, I tried loading a PDF ebook about writing onto my Sony Reader the other day, only to be sorely disappointed. While the PDF file was easy to load and bring up on the Reader, unless I had superhuman eyes that could magnify text greatly, reading the PDF is almost an impossibility. The text was small and grainy. I tried reading a paragraph and got a headache after the first sentence. I don’t know how the Kindle does with PDF files, but I hope it’s much better than the Reader.

These large corporations are out to make money, there’s no surprise about that. They try to use tools like DRM to maximize their profits. I personally think, and many will probably agree, that DRM is only going to hurt them in the long run. If Amazon or Sony made their ebooks universal, to work on any device, they’d greatly expand their market. Likewise, if they made a device that could read just about any format well, more people would be willing to fork over those big bucks, which leads me to my next point…

High prices hurt
As of this writing, the Kindle costs $399. I paid well over $300 for my Sony Reader. With prices like that, it’s no wonder they aren’t flying off the shelves. Granted, Sony says that their Reader product has been more successful than they thought and even came out with a 2nd generation device.

But high prices are just the surface of the problem. If we probe a little deeper, many complaints also revolve around the fact that many of these reading devices are limited to just reading. Huh? Isn’t that what people want? Well, yes and no. The current trend in technology right now appears to be in combining multiple tools and devices into one. Apple is leading the way with it’s iPhone, which has the same price tag as the Kindle. But it has much more functionality.

If the price on these reading devices were cut in half (for example), then I imagine more people would be willing to take the plunge with ebooks. As it stands now, the only consumers of the Reader and Kindle are die-hard bibliophiles – those of us already open to reading digital content and want new ways to consume literature.

The price of ebooks is also an issue. At the Sony Connect store, I was disappointed to find that the ebook prices weren’t that much lower than their print counterparts. Amazon’s prices for the Kindle are a little better, with a majority of books being at $9.99. Still, given that ebooks don’t require printing, storage, shipping and don’t take up valuable shelf space, you would think that publishers could come down even more. Amazon, however, seems to be on the right track with their Amazon Shorts, selling short fiction and other works for a mere $0.49!

Final thoughts
So the question remains: will the Amazon Kindle light your reading fire? Or will the embers just kind of fester in your brain, waiting for that douse of water to put them out forever?

Like I said before, the Kindle is a good sign. Its release means that the market for ebooks is growing. Will it revolutionize the ebook market like the iPod did for music? No. And it’s probably not all the fault of DRM and high prices. I imagine some of the sluggishness we see has a lot to do with the fact that many in the US just don’t read books at all. I’m not sure how that compares to worldwide reading figures, though.

I’ll be interested to see how the Kindle will fair in six months or a year. Will it gain popularity or fizzle out of the spotlight? I don’t know. Only time will tell.

One Response

When I first learned about the Kindle, I thought I’d buy it. Then, I saw the price tag. I would definitely splurge on the iPhone before investing in the Kindle, since it can do so much more. In fact, can’t you view ebooks on the iPhone?
I’d buy an ebook reader for $100. No more, no less. Keep in mind, customers still have to purchase all the books to load on the reader. If they charged less for the reader, they’ll make bank on book sales.
As of now, do you know how many regular books I can buy with $399? A girl could really pimp out her bookshelves with that kind of money!
Interesting topic. I can’t wait to see what the future holds for the marriage of modern technology and literature.
-Melissa Donovan

Melissa Donovan 11/27/2007 11:05 pm