RSSAmazon Kindle: not a gamechanger...yet
By Tim Conneally | Published February 11, 2009, 9:54 AM
Digital distribution has infiltrated media. We saw it happen with the music business and we're seeing it happen with the film business, but will it happen to the book business?
Who better to ask than an exec at a site dealing in the trade of good old fashioned paper books? Betanews spoke with Eric Ginsberg, the VP of marketing at startup Bookswim.com. Its business model is identical to the one pioneered by Netflix, where subscribers build a queue of books, receive them in the mail, and send them back when they're finished reading.
I asked Ginsberg what he thought of the Kindle in respect to the iPod. Personal media players are a major component involved in the disassembly of a record industry built upon hard copy sales, and more than ten years later, the industry still has not recovered its footing. Will the Kindle do the same to the book business?
"I used to deal in consumer electronics," Ginsberg said, "and we got this MP3 player called the [Creative] Nomad...It looked like a Discman, and had 1 GB of storage, which was a lot at the time. Customers would look at the thing and say 'Oh, well how much music can it hold?' and we'd say around a thousand songs. They'd actually say 'Why would I want that many songs inside one device?' like it was too many. Now we know we can fill that up in five minutes, but back then, people didn't know what to do with the capacity."
The same can be said of the Kindle. It has not become readily apparent to the general public where an e-reader is supposed to fit into their life, and many people simply prefer the act of holding and reading a book.
"Without doubt, the book industry is struggling, and new innovations like the Kindle (for e-books), BookSwim (for rental) and Paperbackswap (for online swapping) are the future of literary distribution."
If the Kindle is involved in the future of literary distribution, I asked, how will it be involved in the future of services such as BookSwim, which deal in the physical medium? Will it follow in the footsteps of Netflix and deal in renting both physical books and in digital distribution?"
"It will get to that point eventually," said Ginsberg, "But right now, the e-book market is so young that it will be at least five years before it becomes something we'll seriously need to consider."
First off, I would love to have one to play with but am unwilling to purchase one for the following reasons:
The biggest problem I have with the Kindle is not the price, nor even the technology. The problem I have is that I don't need to own every book I read. The library is one of my favorite places. Until they come up with a model where I can get my book, read it for a couple weeks and then return/delete it, I won't be interested.
In spite of price not being my biggest issue, it does factor into the equation. With a book, I can set it on the seat at the airport, go to the restroom, and when I come back it will still be there. Not so with the Kindle. :) Seems silly, I know, but at some point this kind of consideration comes into play when you are talking about a device you want to take anywhere to read.
The third factor is book price. While $10 is competitive for hard backs, it is not so with paperbacks. There are plenty of paperbacks cheaper than $10. There is also the whole used book market.
The forth problem is the whole DRM thing. If I feel like I need a book enough to want to own it, I want to be able to read my book on whatever device I purchase, now and in the future. I don't want access to my book under control of whether the Amazon (or any one elses) server is available at the time. I want to be able to back up my books so I don't lose them. (Electrical devices are much less forgiving in that area than paper.)
Score: 0
|The price is far too high.
The hardware should be less than $100.
Sorry, as much as I would love an ebook reader, I just won't dish out what I consider to be an insane amount of coin to read text on a portable LCD screen.
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|If they sold the unit for $99, it would have a broad market appeal and not just be a toy for the wealthy. It would be better because at $9.99 for a book, that is much cheaper than most printed books. It would help the environment because less books having to be printed equals less paper being wasted. Overall, this is a useful device. However, the price is MUCH too high.
Score: 1
|Again, why do I need an exhorbitantly priced standalone Kindle?
I can already buy net access to a book on Amazon, and I can also literally buy the digital download of it to view on any number of digital devises. It still seems to me that they simply need to be extending the device support for the digital files and not screwing around with the absurdly overpriced limited function Kindle.
Likewise they could add to the functionality and usability of such files by supporting the ability of the file to 'read' the book - effectively rendering an audio book, complete with multimedia graphics support for illustrations, etc. that you could listen to...
All on existing devices - thus adding functionality to market/device convergence.
But yet another $400 device that does nothing but display electronic type? Yup, hold me back! LOL! This should be a $10 app available at the iPhone App Store, as well as for other device platforms as well.via multiple
And after all is said and done, a book is still often more user friendly in many ways...not to mention significantly cheaper.
This debate reminds me of BR versus DVD and suffers from many of the same issues.
One wonders why they would not consider simply selling a hardcopy book along with the digital file - much like many DVDs are now bundled with a digital file version specifically for use on standalone devices.
Score: 1
|I want a slim line version of a book that won't pile high on my book shelf, actual I want to eliminate it so I can place an air hockey table there...that's more of a marginal benefit of the Kindle than anything IMHO. Unfortunately most people are not going to buy their digital media and thats the sad truth of the world today, but at least the prices on the Kindle are reasonable.
One thing I have notice about the Kindle 1 is that the resell value isn't bad and if you tire of it you can recoup much of the money you spent on the device. I don't know about you but reading anything on an LCD display for too long makes me cross eyed. That goes for the iPhone.
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