Amazon debuts Kindle e-book reader
NEW YORK--"Why are books the last bastion of analog?" Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos asked an audience at New York's W Hotel in Union Square as he unveiled Amazon Kindle, the online-retail giant's new electronic book reader.
"Books have stubbornly resisted digitization," he elaborated. "I think there's a very good reason for that, and that is, the book is so highly evolved and so suited to its task that it's very hard to displace."
Indeed, where hardware companies like Sony have failed. No e-book reader has ever been a market success.
CNET News.com reported last week that Amazon would be debuting its much-delayed e-book reader, which the retailer on Monday started selling for $399.
Kindle tips the scales at a total 10.3 ounces--"That's less than a paperback book," Bezos said--and uses an "electronic ink" technology to mimic paper, not a computer screen. There is no backlight. Currently, the screen is black-and-white; Amazon executives have confirmed that E Ink, which manufactures the screen technology for Kindle as well as for other e-book readers like the Sony Reader, has a prototype of a color display; however, that technology is not yet ready for market.
The battery life, company representatives said, will last several days to a week. A charger can juice up the battery in a matter of two hours.
Notably, Kindle does not require a PC for synchronization or any software to be installed. "Instead of shopping from your PC, you shop directly from the device. The store is on the device, and then the content is wirelessly and seamlessly delivered to the device," Bezos explained.
Amazon's new "Kindle Store" now stocks more than 90,000 titles, "including 101 of 112 current New York Times Best Sellers and new releases, which are $9.99, unless marked otherwise," according to a release from the company.
Kindle, which was manufactured by an undisclosed Chinese original equipment manufacturer, connects to its specialized Amazon store via an EV-DO (Evolution Data Optimized) cellular network through "Amazon Whispernet," built atop Sprint's EV-DO network. No data plan or monthly bill is required. "We pay for all of that behind the scenes so that you can just read," Bezos said, adding that he estimated that it would take "less than a minute" to download a book.
The device can hold about 200 books, the CEO explained. A slot for a standard SD memory card can increase that capacity to about 1,000 books.
Bezos also announced that dozens of newspapers, from The New York Times to France's Le Monde, would also be available for the device, as well as magazines and 300 of the most popular blogs, such as BoingBoing and Slashdot. "On Kindle, newspapers are delivered while you sleep, automatically," he said. The publications will receive a cut of the subscription fee revenue, as no advertising will be displayed on them.
Additionally, Kindle comes with an electronic dictionary and access to Wikipedia. Each device, as News.com reported, also provides the user with a personal Kindle e-mail address so that word-processing files such as Microsoft Word documents, as well as image files, could be sent to the e-book reader.
After unveiling the device, Bezos showed the audience a video of numerous literary and technological luminaries who provided testimonials about Kindle; including authors Toni Morrison and Neil Gaiman, and entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki, who said, "This is BlackBerry for blogs."
But even though the development of Kindle took three years, Bezos said, it still couldn't be entirely perfect. "We never did figure out how to do virtual book signings," he said. Nevertheless, the Amazon chief executive reiterated that the book is due for a 21st-century makeover.
"We forget (that the printed book) is a 500-year-old technology, and we sort of forget that it's even a technology," Bezos mused. "Gutenberg would still recognize a modern-day book."
Caroline McCarthy, a CNET News staff writer, is a downtown Manhattanite happily addicted to social-media tools and restaurant blogs. Her pre-CNET resume includes interning at an IT security firm and brewing cappuccinos. E-mail Caroline. 
for Bezos:
How many books can the device hold?
Can books be backed up for storage when you're through
reading them?
What rights does the purchaser have to transfer books to his PC?
To copy and paste text into documents? etc.
eBooks, with their digital rights management, will prevent most if not all of that.
Books aren't only highly evolved, they are less bound by restrictions.
eBook readers are too expensive and the restrictions on the eBook file themselves are the two reasons why the technology simply isn't here yet.
I also agree with the other comments about the DRM of content. Unless they can match what you can do with the "analog" versions of the content, consumers will not find any value long-term committing to this platform. But overall I applaud Amazon for looks to be the iTunes and iPod of the print world. This has great potential.
In addition, the printed book Just Works, on multiple levels. Like past e-book readers, I suspect that this one will be a marketplace failure.
-Books are friendly and easy to read on a whim, no recharging required.
-Books have texture on the paper and ink on the pages which have such a long lived history that it seems normal for them to be that way.
-Old copies of books that are out of print are easy to find and are compatible with current eyeball technology.
-Books represent more than the information within their pages; they represent history in their aesthetic and makeup.
-Books are more than receptacles for knowledge. They are often artistic. People craft them as objects.
-Letterpress, bookbinding, printmaking all contribute to the book as art.
-Some people like the feel of materiality rather than cold plastic.
-As long as the current population who are familiar with books are alive, they will buy what is familiar to them.
Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon must be a dim bulb.
no thanks
losers
I am miser when it comes to books. I almost never buy books that are fresh on the market. I am not going to pay $20+ for a book when there are plenty of older books to read while I wait for the price to drop 6 months to a year later.
Here is a 1 year cost comparison on 18 books per year:
Kindle: Device + Book Cost = $578
Normal: Books + Shipping for Some Books + Travel for Other Books: $181
The $9.99 book cost is equivalent to waiting and getting the used books online, so I would never get ahead.
Here is the strategy:
1. Make a Amazon ebook-of-the-month club. You get the device for $50 which is probably twice the actual cost since the device is made in China. (<--Another reason for me not to buy)
2. Make a requirement to buy 5 eBooks at $9.99 for new releases and $5.99 or less for older releases. (Why in the hell should I pay more for older books considering they are saving money in printing and distribution.)
3. Make it possible to download news articles that are found free at Google News or similar sites along with other freebies.
4. Pray that the above works.
hmmmmmmmm.
screen alone will cost more than that. Not to mention the built-
in Sprint EVDO hardware, not to mention the cost of using
Sprint's network to download the book - for free to you.
Some problems I have with this reader are:
1: Audio books are better with good voice actors, and offer a
level of reading that printed books don't. Orson Scott Card has
made that case better than I. Considering this type of reader,
and Sony's, I'll just listen on my iPod, thanks. Plus I get two
Audible books a month plus other streaming media each month
for about the same price of two books from Amazon.
2: They don't support color, which would be an advantage over
audio books, or any black and white eBook media. Sure standard
novels don't really benefit that much from color. But
newspapers, magazines, and other media prove PDFs are way
more flexible when embedded with videos, flash, Postscript text,
graphics, etc.
3: No backlight for reading in bed without a lamp. I suppose
someone could put that in their Match.com profile. "I don't
snore, use a backlit eBook reader, or eat crackers in bed."
So you get even more locked into a particular content provider than otherwise in entertainment when you buy one of these.
I could see this device being plausible for someone without a computer or high-speed internet connection however.
If Amazon expects this to take off, they need to get it below $100.
Take a small, 5x7 WinCE or Palm or Linux based tablet, add wifi and a pdf reader, and viola. This shouldnt be rocket science.
And I'm sorry, but $399 is way too expensive for this. You can get a full blown PDA w/wifi and bluetooth for far less. I understand the e-ink surface may make things more expensive, but still, this is too much.
And whats with the keyboard? That just makes it bigger. Learn from phones - slide out keyboards, or better, touch screen.
Did someone's head fall off? Does any rational person really not understand why these readers aren't adopted?
Here's the solution for adoption for all of those idiotic products. Put the decimal point after the second digit, as in $39.99. THEN I'll buy it, and not before.
If you like to read, and want to read from a wide selection of materials - or have at your disposal, a 'library' or collection (even if it's just 2-3 books) - then ebooks make it much more convenient, and enable you to essentially take multiple texts (a couple of newspapers, 2-3 bestsellers, your reference books )on the road.
That's why the e-book is not going anywhere. When someone finally learns to do it right (and PDF is key, I agree with another poster) - they will have a goldmine.
The kindle may or may not be it - but it's on the right track with the instant downloads.
- SDHC?
- by amigabill November 19, 2007 11:25 AM PST
- The SD card is neat. But SD only goes to 2GB capacity. The newer SDHC (high capacity) cards are physically identical but electronically incompatible. They go from 4GB to 32GB. Support for these newer SDHC cards would be cool.
- Like this Reply to this comment
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