Kindle: Great gift for Washington's Birthday?
As reported by The Wall Street Journal this week, Amazon.com's e-book reader, the Kindle, is out of stock.
The Journal credits Oprah Winfrey, who recommended the Kindle on her show in October.
I saw this effect myself in the page views for old blog posts here--the daily view count for some of my old Kindle posts, especially my comparison of the Kindle with Sony's Reader, spiked the very next day, and it remains higher today than it was before that show aired.
Amazon's Web site reports delivery delays of 11 weeks to 13 weeks, which means that it might even come as late as Washington's Birthday (to be celebrated February 16).
Amazon's Kindle e-book reader.
(Credit: Amazon.com)The larger message in the Journal article is that the Kindle's success proves that "e-book readers are for real," which is a conclusion about which I have mixed feelings. On one hand, I think that many of us knew that already. On the other, sales of Kindle-compatible e-books are still trivial, compared with sales of paper books, so what has really been proved?
I think that all we can really say today about e-books is that they're good for some people. We don't really know how much demand there is for e-books, as they exist today, because market awareness still isn't very high outside the usual "early adopter" community.
But I know one thing for sure: there's a lot of room for improvement. The Kindle's apparent successor has been spotted online, Sony's third-generation Reader was recently released, and I wrote about a good-looking prototype e-book reader from Plastic Logic in September.
All three of these are improvements over the current Kindle in various ways, but they all fall short of the economy, robustness, and readability of paper books.
It seems to me that at this rate, it could be 20 years before e-books begin to outsell paper books.
However popular the Kindle is, it can never address the whole market, as long as it's so closely associated with one bookseller. Without a single dominant platform, we'll never get a single commercial standard for e-book distribution. At the Baen Free Library, Project Gutenberg, and independent e-book sellers such as eBooks.com, customers face an excessive variety of format choices.
For this reason, I'm almost sorry that Amazon sells the Kindle under its own name. I understand why the online retailer chose to develop the Kindle--anything the company can do to promote book sales is good, in the long run--but it might have been better if the Kindle design had been licensed to multiple competing suppliers.
Frankly, I think that even Sony might dump its proprietary platform, if Amazon were more open with the Kindle. My guess is that Sony's Reader business has yet to break even, and given the competition from the Kindle's superior features and celebrity endorsements, it could be a long time before it does.
The Kindle has the potential to become the standard e-book platform, with commercial e-books from Amazon's Kindle store, Amazon's own Web site for free Mobipocket books, and support for direct online downloads from independent Web sites (see Manybooks.net and Feedbooks.com, for example).
It would also be good to see more competition among suppliers of e-book display technology. E Ink owns the whole market, and the company's progress to date has been fairly slow. Sony's third-generation PRS-700 uses an E Ink display virtually identical to that found in the original PRS-500, which came out more than two years ago.
The sooner we reach the point of sub-$100 readers, the sooner we can build a multimillion-customer market for e-books, and the sooner we can start talking seriously about how "e-book readers are for real."
Peter N. Glaskowsky is a computer architect in Silicon Valley and a technology analyst for the Envisioneering Group. He has designed chip- and board-level products in the defense and computer industries, managed design teams, and served as editor in chief of the industry newsletter "Microprocessor Report." He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. 
The only advantages that I can see to an eBook reader is searchability (they can do that, right?) and the ability to carry around a library the way I carry around my music collection in my iPod. But booksare different beasts from pieces of music.
Right now, the Kindle is just a book TiVo--that only works on one channel. And I don't use books the way I watch TV either.
But give me a kindle with the ability to search across all the books loaded on it, a pre-loaded Britannica that will link to words in the book, and a playlist feature--you know, quotes--and I'd start looking at a Kindle. Provided the variety's there, provided it will read non DRM e-books (or better yet, pdf's), and provided my books don't vanish when Amazon rolls out its Ultra Reeder Extreem five years from now.
Battery life is an issue but otherwise it meets all those requirements and then some.
Its called a TabletPC, slate version.
The Search function works across all the stored content plus a dictionary and Wikipedia (though it's slow).
The Kindle doesn't have any real concept of playlists, though.
Fortunately, the Kindle is quite fluent with non-DRM ebooks, and it's even able to download other books wirelessly without a PC, contradicting a claim in the Wall Street Journal article. The PDF support (via translation) is inadequate, though. Really basic PDFs can work okay, but anything complicated is hopeless.
So maybe the Kindle isn't what you want. I think it isn't what most people want, really, even most heavy readers. But keep an eye on it. It'll get better.
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2. It WILL read non DRM books.
3. For formats that it can't read Amazon will do a FREE convert for you. Just email it to them and they email it back. Essentially anything you can print from your computer can be read. They'll also send the converted copy wirelessly to the kindle for a charge of 10 cents.
4. You'll never get away from DRM. The publishers require it, not Amazon. Same thing with iTunes, Netflix downloads etc. If you want convenient electronic delivery of intellectual property then the owners are going to ask for assurances you won't steal in return. It's the way of the world and has nothing to do with Kindle.
5. You don't have to pay for most books. There are like 100,000 books out there for free. Many more at low cost. Event the most expensive Kindle books (Current NYT best sellers) are like $9.95
6. It is completely wireless and requires no computer. All books, daily newspapers, magazines etc are sent via built in wireless...and no you don't have to have some paid account. Hell you can websurf for free on it if you don't mind the screen/keyboard limitations.
7. It does audio books and mp3s (although it makes a lousy mp3 player)
Edmalloy:
The sales are not "cooked". The thing is selling like hotcakes. I bought one a couple months back. It was a 2 week waitlist. I had to resubmit my order (credit card expired during the 2 weeks). The new order was 3 weeks. The waitlist a few days later stretched out past christmas. Amazon is making these as fast as they can. The things are $360/ea. They have no reason to deliberately not sell them.
How you made the leap from "out of stock" to conspiracy to sell more by deliberately not selling them is beyond me. Take off your tinfoil hat. It's not working and it's apparently making you dumb :)
I know they are trying to converge functionalities and can respect how this helps people who use them for more than casual reading, one books are not a one size fits all. That is why they come in different sizes, and types.
Until the eBook industry gets a grasp on that, establishes a single standard for the books themselves and then suppplies different form factors that can use these standardized books, I will still prefer paper.
When I buy a book from Borders it is the same book that is from Barns & Noble. I do not need a special Borders key to unlock it.
This also means that retailers have to support it. When a customer goes in to a book store and ask for a book the sales staff should not only ask if they want it in hard cover, paper back or audio book, but eBook format as well. A format that will work on any reader software. Sony, Amazon or even the iPhone.
Audible really started to take off when they started (officially) supporting the iPod and partnered with Apple making audio books available through iTunes. Originally, Audible used a audio format that the iPod could not playback.
Sony is making a huge mistake not officially supporting the Macintosh platform and not selling their books through a kiosk in every Borders (and/or Barnes and Noble).
Amazon is making a mistake buy trying to sell a butt ugly, poorly made product for and outrageous price and not selling their kindle books through iTunes like they do with their partner Audible.
They need to take a page (yes pun) from Stanza. Stanza is free. They have free (public domain) books and offer many new releases at a fair price. I guess this is why Stanza has been downloaded to more iPhones than Amazon has sold Kindles.
Sony is already getting away from their DRM. The book publishers have created their own EPUB format, that Sony opened up on my PRS-505 through a software upgrade. This means you can buy eBooks from any website that sells EPUB (which are still rare)--you aren't tied to Sony Connect anymore. I have never had a problem importing free (public domain) books from ManyBooks.net, although the proof reading isn't to the standard of the 100 free classics I got with the reader. I loved the concept of the reader, was a little uncertain when I first got it, but now I love the versatility. If I'm reading a book I'm not enjoying, I've got 100 other titles at my fingertips to choose from, and it's great for travel (no more lugging books through the airport). After getting used to it, I won't give it up. I've even contacted authors and asked them to publish their books in the EPUB format; one author responded and is anxious for his publisher to get a move on, because they all see the torrent's (aka theft) of their books out there.
I love the idea of kiosks in B&N, Borders, and I'd add airports and libraries to that list.
DRM may be a pain, but it's the price we pay for access to commercial ebooks. DRM works pretty well on the Kindle, as it does on the iPod, so it isn't that high a price to pay.
At $100, these would be godsends. They have DRM, so copying would be limited. Printing and shipping costs would also be eliminated. And the orthopedic health of our children will be vastly improved. The publishers would still make their money, but the kids would be far better off.
The fact that the current version is "out of stock" when a new version has been announced seems to mean that the current version wasn't selling so that Amazon decided to add to the hype for the next version.
I have nothing to base my conclusions on except a lifetime of following retail trends and a fondness for H. C. Anderson.
ed
I also think that Amazon is resorting to the time-honored Microsoft practice of having employees submit inaccurate or untrue comments .
Also, what "inaccurate or untrue comments" do you see here? I mean, seriously, you're the only one posting bogus comments here. At least you're the only one admitting you are... :-)
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- by December 9, 2008 2:31 PM PST
- You can still get a refurbished Kindles by Christmas, direct from Amazon for $329 (although at this point I'd recommend you pay for at least 2-day shipping):
- Reply to this comment
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(20 Comments)http://www.tinyurl.com/RefurbKindle
Dozens have been sold and shipped since Dec 1, but they go in an out of stock. They don't last on the site very long, so if you want one, you must order it immediately if you find one in stock. If you they are out of stock when you check, be sure to read my blog for tips on getting one:
http://beesontheknob.blogspot.com