Comments on: Amazon Kindle: Must Try Harder

By: Kindle: They Didn't Start The Fire | Booksquare

Kindle: They Didn't Start The Fire | Booksquare — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 14:36:07 +0000

[...] seen is just someone’s idea of a clever joke, I suspect that nobody is that funny (sample is here). I sincerely hope that is not the real thing — the image shown has been floating around the [...]

By: Mark Thwaite

Mark Thwaite — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 13:51:02 +0000

Adrian, I’m with you that the the $5/600 price point for the Kindle is way, way too much.

I can see techies wanting to play getting an iPhone etc. and so ignoring the Kindle, and I can see bibliophiles running a mile from that kind of outlay — its, what, the price of 50 or 60 paperbacks?

By: Adrian Hon

Adrian Hon — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 19:48:04 +0000

I found another article on her site which is probably the one you were thinking of: http://www.booksquare.com/how-the-iphone-can-save-the-book-business/

The fact that there are PDFs on the iTunes Store does not make it anywhere near being a way of selling and distributing books. For one thing, publishers don’t appear to be interested, which is key. For another, Apple would have to make another dedicated app, and they have a full plate with all the other features and fixes they need to make.

There is one major difference between the iPhone and a dedicated eBook reader, and that’s screen size. Phones are designed to fit into a pocket. Anything that fits into a pocket cannot be much bigger than the iPhone, which has a 3.5 inch display. This is not a comfortable size for most people, and so the only way you can get a bigger display is by having a second device. Since people already quite happily carry around magazines and books with them, I don’t think they’ll have any problem with carrying around a dedicated eBook reader. This is something I think Apple appreciates and will probably do something about one day.

By: Adrian Hon

Adrian Hon — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 19:37:10 +0000

Jeremy: I was expecting that article to be about reading eBooks on the iPhone but it oddly talks about everything *but* that. Personally, I wouldn’t see myself reading too much on the iPhone – the screen size and form factor isn’t quite right – but I agree with Brian that there are some very interesting possibilities for short form or serialised fiction.

I’m not convinced by her arguments – I just don’t believe that people are going to start browsing the web for information about books while in bookstores on their phones. If they did, they’d find that they could buy it cheaper from Amazon, which is hardly good news for retailers.

I’m gadget mad, and if I’m in a bookstore, I’m looking at the books, checking their blurbs, browsing the bestseller and discount section. I’m not looking at authors or publishers’ websites on my iPhone – I’d do that at home. Before publishers worry about making their websites iPhone compatible (which is of dubious utility in any case) they should just be improving them full stop.

People with iPhones can browse the web. We get it. Unfortunately, the more fundamental problem is that there’s an awful lot to do on the web besides read about books, and the iPhone is not going to magically change that.

By: victor

victor — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 18:45:05 +0000

Thanks for this post, I would have missed the New York Times article otherwise.
I have been running Bookyards (a free online library located at http://www.bookyards.com ) for the past 7 years, and I have been waiting just as long for a reliable ebook reader. Let us keep our fingers crossed.

By: jeremy

jeremy — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 18:37:57 +0000

interesting article about potential for ebooks on apple devices here
http://www.booksquare.com/apple-saves-the-publishing-industry/

By: Brian Enigma

Brian Enigma — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 14:52:19 +0000

It’s rather spendy, but the iPhone is a pretty decent eBook reader. Most people with an iPhone did not shell out the cash specifically to have a reader, but with a 3rd party app, its 160dpi screen makes reading fonts of any size quite easy. There are a few drawbacks, the biggest of which is hacking your phone (which is simple with http://iphone.nullriver.com/beta/ but is not necessarily a comfortable step for most people to take) and it only reads HTML, plaintext, and PDF files, but I’ve found the form factor to be quite nice.

All that being said, I really don’t like reading much more than a short story (or chapter or two of Harry Potter) on an electronic device. I prefer old-fashioned physical pages and usually leave the iPhone for audiobooks.

By: Adrian Hon

Adrian Hon — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 14:03:26 +0000

Yes, that’s a good point – none of this is confirmed. Unfortunately the evidence for the wireless and keyboard is pretty strong.

$200 is probably the most you can get people to pay – any more and you’ll get a lot of ‘What, and I have to pay for books as well?’. Open standards would be wonderful.

A smarter move for Amazon would be to simply open up a web store with a simple API that various readers and software could plug in to. I am yet to be convinced that they can do hardware or software particularly well.

By: Hadrien GARDEUR

Hadrien GARDEUR — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 13:57:38 +0000

Well… officially we have no information about this “Kindle”. I hope that the real product has nothing to do with this prototype: honestly, what we need right now isn’t WiFi and a keyboard.
A simple reader that would support both open standards and Amazon/Mobipocket, with a low price (100-200$) is what the mass market really need.