Has anyone seen the new Amazon Kindle? It's the new e-book. Take a look at all the features!

It weighs less than a paperback, is updated with cell-phone-like technology so you can download from anywhere, and it can hold lots and lots of books. Also, it reads like a book page, not backlit like a computer, so you can even read it in full sun (so I'm told). It even has FREE wireless access to Wikipedia.

Has anyone seen one in person yet? Thoughts?

First thought is that people who like books like books. I'd never buy an e-book reader I like the look, feel and smell of books and I like having shelves full of books at home. I don't think it will catch on.

All I've seen about it so far is a single newspaper article.

You may call that an article. I call it an advertisement. It should have the words "paid advertising feature" prominantly displayed at the top of every page.

I want you all to put your hands on your hearts and say after me

"I, <insert name here>, hereby pledge that I shall never buy this device or any similar device and that my eternal allegiance shall be to books printed on paper."

Guess it's pretty obvious where I stand on the matter.

and it was the cover story!

I watched a bit of Jeff Bezos appearing on the Charlie Rose show (PBS), and amidst all the salesmanship (boy does he sell), he said one interesting thing relating to the problems they encountered in developing this technology - the key feature of a book is that it disappears while you read it.

quote: my eternal allegiance shall be to books printed on paper

[wise-ass]
I guess I should scrap my plans to Christmas-gift you with a subscription to OED on-line.
Pity; it seemed such an appropriate gift.
[/wise-ass]

quote:

Originally posted by shufitz:
quote: my eternal allegiance shall be to books printed on paper

[wise-ass]
I guess I should scrap my plans to Christmas-gift you with a subscription to OED on-line.
Pity; it seemed such an appropriate gift.
[/wise-ass]

I meaant of course books that you actually read. Reference sources are adifferent kettle of fish altogether. (Mind you if you can afford the shipping I'd absolutely love the full bound set of the paper version of the OED.)

I agree with Bob that there is just something about curling up with a book, turning the pages, and having books around. That "feel and smell" that Bob describes is why I prefer hard covered books, though for the sake of cost I often relent.

Jason Fried on the Signal vs Noise site blogs that he's read overwhelmingly negative reviews so far and urges we give it more time before slagging it off. "Yesterday barely anyone on the planet had actually used Kindle, but they just couldn’t wait to tell you how much it sucked."

Most of the comments on the article are ... overwhelmingly negative.

quote:

the key feature of a book is that it disappears while you read it

Mine don't. What was he talking about?

metaphorically, I suppose -- when you really "get into" a book, you don't even know it's physically there.

Arnie, that was an excellent link. I found this site, within your link, interesting. The person who linked to that site said, "It’s not the physicality of books that people love, it’s their reliability and permanence...." To me, the physicality is related to the permanence and reliability. For example, if I enjoy a book, I will often make notes to myself in the margins of the book (physicality) so that I can refer to that section again (permanence and reliability). That, of course, is not possible with the online function.

I guess, as some had posted in arnie's link, the key is that people can choose what they'd like. I probably wouldn't choose the online feature, but if others enjoy it, so be it.

I'm not pimpin' for Kindle, you understand; but I think y'all missed this feature, "You can jot down a gloss on the page of the book you're reading, or capture passages with an electronic version of a highlight pen."

I think this is something you can't do with the Sony Book..

I see two possibilities for the future, one appealing, the other not.

The appealing one is that, as I said at the top of the thread, people who like books like books and the Kindle will be a failure. Regardless of the extremely long Newsweek advert (is Newsweek supposed to be nothing more than an advertising rag ?) If that happens hurrah for our side.

The unappealing possibility is that the Kindle will be a success and what will happen is the same thing that happened when CDs were introduced and we were assured that this wasn't the death of vinyl, we'd still be able to choose vinyl if wanted. Well I did want and I couldn't - within months new recordings were being issued only on CD. The same techno-con is now happening with MP3 downloads. Many recordings are available in no other format because this is what we are supposed to want. Well I don't. Losing vinyl was bad enough. Now we're expected to put up with losing the physical item altogether.

If Kindle took off how long do you think it would be before authors were releasing books ONLY playable on an electronic format?

Fortunately I just can't see book lovers ever wanting it so I think the first scenario is far more likely than the second. It's a toy that will appear to techno-geeks rather than literary ones and as such won't (I sincerely hope) find the market that they are hoping for.

even so, I sure would like to get my hands on one (on the cheap), just to see for myself exactly what we're railing against! (;

quote:

Fortunately I just can't see book lovers ever wanting it

The last two books I wrote (admittedly non-fiction) have only been released as CDRoms. This saves their supplier a huge amount of cash since there are no printing costs. Those who want the physical item can print it our at their own expense on their office printers.

I rather fear that the extreme cheapness of online and similar electronic formats will be the driver in this.

I saw the Charlie Rose interview with Bezos.

I think it's a cool gadget; I don't imagine it will replace books. It looks more like an IPod for readers. I would love to have it just to travel around with, so I can always be reading in my spare moments.

I have 3 kids who spend more time playing instruments, making CD's, and listening to music than any other leisure activity. They all have ipods. The internet created a huge surge in our CD-buying, because it was so much easier to find music that one enjoyed, & broaden one's interests through research. Now ipods have cut back the CD-buying somewhat, although one is paying musicians via MP-3 downloads of individual songs. However. All this research and listening to IPods inevitably culminates in the purchase of CD's to amplify & enjoy on one's home system. IPods didn't replace enjoying the in-home system, they broadened the possibilities of portable listening. I expect we'll see something similar with the Bezos-thingie.

Right now, the only ebooks I buy are those I need & want to have permanently available on my computer, to consult as I'm creating lesson plans or other tools. If I had a Kindle I'd be tempted to buy copies of books I was reading at home, to take on the road. Or boooks I was only mildly interested in, or how-to books and others which become obsolete quickly. I would actually be increasing my spending to include a new way of reading, and perhaps even to study and research more than I presently do.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: bethree5,

ALl well and good until someone starts releasing books ONLY in the electronic format because
it drops production cost to zero. Then all of a sudden this device becomes something that you MUST have if you want to read Harry Potter Volume 64: Harry Potter and the Walking Frame of Doom.

Yes, we talked about this on the chat today. Bob makes an excellent point about the CD/record example. When CDs came out, Shu and I had to decide which way to go, and we, too, chose to buy a turntable, and not a CD player. 'Twas a pity. Recently my father wanted to replace his VCR player, and they were only selling DVD players where he is (I do realize he can get one elsewhere). He can't watch his video cassettes at this point.

With Richard's example of the cost differences, I do wonder if we will see a huge trend toward online reading. Yet, books won't completely disappear; of that I am fairly certain.

It will be interesting, however, to see if Bethree is correct that the Kindle will be an added dimension. I know that I very much prefer reading books, compared to reading online. I doubt I will change in that.

I would just add one more encouragement. The internet-- so far-- seems to respond very well to smaller markets. True, for most of our adult lives, if the market was not big enough for a mass assembly-line run, the object didn't get produced. However that's really changed. There are plenty of us who'd rather have books, & will pay for them. We will no doubt find what we want on the internet, eventually.

For example: I have had trouble all my adult yrs finding decent medieval music to buy, as it's such a tiny market. It used to be Deutschegrammophon only-- go to the old B&N in NYC or forget it. There's more of it now being produced & sold than ever, thanks to global market on internet.

Another example: for. lang. teaching materials for the very young used to be completely non-existent. My main problem has been the head-in-sand US attitudes about languages other than English. However, things have been a-poppin' in UK, Europe, Scandinavia, & Eastern Europe for a decade, & now there is PLENTY available to me-- even tho maybe 1% of it is produced in USA.

Did you know vinyl is having a retro comeback, albeit in a minor way? Many of my sons' oddball music interests produce at least one record per year. We still have a turntable, and cassette player, and cd player.

As to the eclipse of VHS, I believe that's just a case of quality. Tapes age, get brittle, disintegrate rapidly. We switched as soon as we could for that reason, when both were widely available.

Time may prove me wrong, but I can't imagine that the global market for real books will dwindle to the point where it doesn't pay for a few companies in the world to keep printing them.

quote:

Time may prove me wrong, but I can't imagine that the global market for real books will dwindle to the point where it doesn't pay for a few companies in the world to keep printing them.

But the point is that it only has to be ONE book that you want to read that is published exclusively in electronic format and you are forced to buy a reader if you want to see it and the CD experience teaches that it wouldn't be one and it wouldn't be an obscure title , it would be many of the most popular titles. Moreover we are already seeing the death of CDs replaced with the download format where you need a computer to do the downloading, storage on the computer to hold the file, software to transfer it to a more portable device, a more portable device to transfer it to... etc.

There are already albums ONLY available in download format and if I want even one of them then I have to have a device that will download them and another device that will play them.

If anyone wants to buy a Kindle (though I wouldn't) I'd offer a prediction and a word of caution. The prediction is that within a year there will be at least one, perhaps several products offering a near identical service in a completely non-compatible format. The word of advice is to wait a couple of years until the rival formats have come and one has dominated the market then buy that one. Remember that of the three systems that were originally in the video market both Philips and Betamax were superior to VHS but it was VHS that won.

-------

My biggest objection to new technologies is that they DON'T run alongside the old ones they replace them. Turntables are now very difficult to buy, consumables such as styluses for them nigh on impossible.

Video players are much more diffiuclut to buy than a couple of years ago and getting ever more difficult. That means when the one I have breaks down I'll have to hunt hard for a replacement or throw away all the VHS movies I have and buy them again on DVD, except that we're already seeing the attempt to oust DVD by bluray so that DVD players will become obsolete and all the movies that people originally had on VHS and then replaced to DVD will have to be replaced again when their DVD player breaks in ten years time.

I know this is a rant but it seems to me that the development of new media technologies is driven solely by the desire to make people replace perfectly good stuff that they already have with a new format and to make the companies selling it to you very rich in the process.

The good news from the book front (and doesn't Jeff Bozo just wish it were otherwise) is that the old fashioned books printed on paper require no special equipment for reading and so can't be made unreadable by the introduction of new formats. You may never be able to buy and read another book but you will always be able to read the ones you already have.

quote:

Originally posted by BobHale:
The good news from the book front (and doesn't Jeff Bozo just wish it were otherwise) is that the old fashioned books printed on paper require no special equipment for reading and so can't be made unreadable by the introduction of new formats. You may never be able to buy and read another book but you will always be able to read the ones you already have.

Maybe what Jeff said about books disappearing was just wishful thinking on his part.

quote:

old fashioned books printed on paper require no special equipment for reading

Special equipment ?

Some of us have found, as premature middle age approaches and we feel "time's winged chariot hurrying near," a need for such special equipment as contact lenses or even bifocal spectacles. Macular degeneration, they say, can be remedied through the use of Brighter Lights, and maybe even Magnifying Glasses.