Have you heard about the Kindle? It is the latest and very popular electronic “book reader” and I don’t really understand why people are buying these things. And why am I discussing it on a climate change site? I doubt it really cuts your greenhouse gas emissions due to reading. But people are buying Kindles through the Amazon links to regular books on my site, so I thought they were worth investigating.
I understand the advantages: you can have thousands of books on one – great for travelling. Also easy to download a new book – done in 60 seconds! Of course, that doesn’t include the time to enter your credit card information.
I can certainly understand why Amazon likes them: rather than selling a book for $11.99, they sell a Kindle for $259 plus whatever e-books you want – for the same price as a printed book.
And I bet publishers love them: same selling price as a regular book but near-zero cost to produce and distribute.
What I cannot understand is why people are buying them. I should mention that I do not possess a Kindle, nor do I feel compelled to purchase one. Feel free to send me one if you want.
Why Kindle?
To pay $259 (the newer, larger Kindle DX is $489) before you can start reading seems extreme. And why do Kindle books cost the same as printed books?
There are definitely some real advantages. There is the convenience of having many books, newspapers, and magazines instantly and always available, for example. You can zoom, change the text size for easier reading, and the thing will read the book or newspaper to you if you want.
A real plus for someone like me is the ability to annotate, highlight – and search! This is potentially huge for many of us who make our living researching and writing. To be able to find that damn quote without…well, look at how I currently do this:
No question, an e-book has this beat.
And it is true that older classics are much cheaper, from free to $2.
Why Not Kindle
These features might convince me to try one, except for two major worries:
-
What happens if the Kindle doesn’t come out the winner in the e-book reader race? There are other brands and no industry standard; if the Kindle disappears can you easily port all your books over to the some other brand? Remember Sony Betamax?
- What happens when technology advances, or when Amazon or any of its suppliers go bankrupt? Where are your books now? VHS beat Beta and has now been superceded by DVD, which will likely soon be wiped out by video-on-demand type services.
Obviously there are other concerns; the thing is not waterproof. If I take a book to the beach, my maximum loss is the cost of the book. If my Kindle gets wet/damaged/stolen, I’m out the cost of the Kindle, plus I now have no books to read until it is replaced and everything is re-downloaded.
What to do?
Should you buy one? If it works for you, yes. I’m tempted for the search and annotate features alone – but then I would have to repurchase all my real books as Kindle versions, a substantial expense. If you like the latest gadgets, the Kindle definitely looks cool and is a lot of fun to play with.
If you do decide to go for one, here are the current models; don’t forget the case! And be sure to let me know what you think of the Kindle experience.
Brighthand.com’s Kindle Review
UPDATE:
This is what I’m afraid will happen with e-books. Twice while writing this article, I started a rant about e-books turning into what legal music downloads have become: You are essentially renting music. And I twice erased it when I went to Puretracks.com, where I had purchased numerous songs in 2003/4 and there they were – just waiting in my account for me to download them again if I wanted.
But, of course…they won’t work in iTunes. I tried to import them into iTunes and got a DRM error message. When I contacted Puretracks support, here is their response:
It’s not Puretracks only, it’s any DRM Protected WMA (Windows Media Audio) formatted tracks cannot work in iTunes as Apple does not support such format. Other music vendors provide DRM Protected tracks that will not work in iTunes as well such as Napster.
Clearly not the music vendor’s problem, but mine. And as much as I would love to dump iTunes, which I hate, in favour of Winamp, only iTunes will sync with my wife’s iPod. So, capitalism fail, from the end user’s point-of-view. This reinforces my point about spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on e-books – that could become e-trash should the Kindle go away.
3 comments ↓
[...] sex toys, big screen TVs (or anything electronic, including my favourite whipping toy, the Kindle, cool as it otherwise is), and cars that run on fossil [...]
[...] I am trying to help you. A collapse is certain, barring a miracle, if we continue on our current path. It may be too late anyway, because we have put off too long converting from oil to other sources of energy. The books I link here are to help you protect yourself and your family. You don’t have to buy them; get them from the library or a local bookstore if you prefer. But in the event of collapse, you can bet the gardening and self-sufficiency books will disappear pretty quickly from libraries and bookstores. And you won’t be able to count on the Internet or your Kindle. [...]
[...] number essentially permanently unemployed and getting by as best they can. Big screen TVs, Kindles, and Blu-Ray players will be low on their list of “must-haves.” That doesn’t mean these [...]
Leave a Comment