Comments on: contra kindle

By: Chris Kindle

Chris Kindle — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 09:11:52 +0000

Just came across your blog on Google. Interesting post, you bring up a few good things to think about. Good luck with the blog.

By: bowerbird

bowerbird — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 18:39:42 +0000

jason-

first of all, your machine is _rad_. i love it.

but…

> The inference that because content
> can now be transmitted electronically
> books will necessarily be read
> on electronic screens overlooks
> such factors as cost, convenience,
> reliability and human nature as well as
> the peculiar nature of books.

within 10 years, cost, convenience, and
reliability will favor the digital, not paper.

i’m not sure about “human nature”
or “the peculiar nature of books”,
but i’d guess they’ll go with digital too,
at least as far as the kids are concerned.

but there will always be a time and place
for a paper-book too, so your machine is rad,
did i mention that? i love it!

-bowerbird

By: جک

جک — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 06:20:11 +0000

Thank you

By: PublishingMojo

PublishingMojo — Mon, 26 May 2008 20:50:16 +0000

Skip the Kindle. If I want something that looks, feels, and works like a book, I’ll get a book. If I want to take the complete works of Shakespeare on the plane with me, I’ll download PDFs onto my laptop. I’m carrying the laptop anyway, and I don’t want the extra weight or hassle of another device to carry.
No matter how cool an e-book reader is, it’s still a single-purpose machine, like those gizmos they sell just for cooking hot dogs. The successful e-book will be a killer app, not a piece of hardware. Give me an e-book reader that runs on all the devices I’m using anyway, like my laptop, phone, and PDA. While I’m wishing, I want:
* High-resolution color images, video, and audio
* Touch-screen interface
* Search
* Comment
* Bookmark
* Link
* Collaboration
* Support for courseware configured for student-teacher dialogue.
Now that’s an e-book I’d spend three hundred bucks on.

By: Michael Jensen

Michael Jensen — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 03:05:41 +0000

I suspect we’ll have to wait until B3 — the third generation of the e-book — before it becomes anything close to a real competitor to print.

The threshold of multiple hundreds of dollars to purchase — for a reader, when there’s not all that much out there, compared to what I can find in a bookstore — is significant.

That doesn’t mean that the e-book market, on Kindle or any other platform, isn’t worth pursuing. But it’ll be a marginal play for a good long time.

By: Jason Epstein

Jason Epstein — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 19:44:22 +0000

my error: the new Sony model sells for $299.00, not $160.

By: Jason Epstein

Jason Epstein — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 22:52:09 +0000

Mike: by recreational books I meant current best seellers. These represent about 5% of chainstore volume which itself is only a fraction of total book sales. The big numbers come from everything else including deep backlist or long tail. je

By: Mike Shatzkin

Mike Shatzkin — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 00:49:36 +0000

One never knows how typical one’s own reaction or experience is, but I’d say this:

1. the market of “recreational” readers is a lot larger for trade publishers than the market of “professional” readers (which I assume must be the complement. So the fact that the Kindle will appeal to them shouldn’t be dismissed.

2. the paper book cannot provide three critical things that the Kindle does: immediate access to many books: a built-in dictionary; and the ability to change fonts. Jason knows more words than I do and maybe his eyes are better; I find both of those capabilities to be killer aps. The immediate access is “cool”, but for that alone I wouldn’t have switched from paper.

3. pre-printed books is a critical mass business. The Kindle (and other e-readers) don’t have to take “most” of the market to push some books from “printable” to “unprintable” in pre-printed and distributed form. Of course, more books not pre-printed increases the Kindle’s market, but also increases Expresso’s (and Lightning’s.)

4. not mentioned above but not trivial as a consideration is WEIGHT. Even when reading one book at a time, the Kindle is lighter.