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Kindle Thoughts

April 9th, 2009

There’s a bunch of news and discussion online about the amazon Kindle ebook readers, the Kindle 2 text-to-speech feature, and the pricing of ebooks.

First, I recently got a kindle (the original) and I’ve been loving it.  I read books on it faster than paper versions, a single charge lasts forever, and you can carry a giant suitcase full of books in the thing, handy for travel.  What is ridiculous, however, is that the automatic delivery only works inside the United States (running over the cell phone system) and you can’t buy a kindle version of a book on amazon, download to your computer, and move to the kindle via cable.  So, this is a fatal flaw for the international traveler out of the country for any length of time (like me this year).  For instance, I accidently bought book 2 of Jim Hines’ Goblin series, and now I have to wait until next month to get book 1 if that’s where I want to start (it is).  If I have this wrong and there’s a way around this, please let me know.

But otherwise, in my opinion. the ebook has arrived.  The kindle and the competition need to get cheaper to be widespread, but amazon hasn’t exactly been shipping immediately anyway (reminds me of the wii).  Basically amazon seems poised to do for books what ipods and itunes did for music.  If you deliver, conveiniently, the digital product at a good price, the business model is going to work and people aren’t going to pirate so much it hurts profits.

Let me comment on the issues being discussed.

The price point is apparently not yet established.  Or maybe it is in process of being established.  Either way, I think people protesting the high prices and arguing fairness are a bit ridiculous.  If it is too high, don’t buy it!  Let the market set the price point.  People without a lot of knowledge of the publishing industry think they know better about what things should cost, when the truth is they’re usually pretty clueless (I’ve seen polls/research to back this up, and people think authors like me make a lot of money — ha!).  Editors seem pretty poorly paid, most authors are pretty poorly paid, and publishers are often working hard not to fold.  Should ebooks be priced like hardbacks?  Probably not.  Don’t buy them.  Should they be priced at a dollar?  Probably not.  That’s way too little to pay off everyone involved in making a book, and books last long enough that sales won’t jump dramatically at that level.

The game is early.  Companies finding the sweet spot for prices will make decent money, and others will copy them soon enough.  Trying to force it with petitions and shame lables and organized boycotts, seems whiny.  Sure, tell people what you’ll pay.  Don’t make it a freaking crusade and accuse publishers of trying to make money, because, gosh, they are trying to make money and there’s nothing wrong with that!

As for the text to speech issue, I think the computer-generated voice is ridiculous and not competition for audio books, but I think it’s also totally right for the feature to be challenged.  We may have devices a few years from now that do a much better job reading a book aloud, and that is competition.  Fail to challenge it now, and there may be no recourse later when it is a real issue.  Just another set of rights to work into contracts in the future.  Music managed to deal with radio, and ebooks will learn to deal with text to speech devices soon enough.

In the meantime, be aware that there is a free version of Star Dragon you can read on your kindle.  (You want one of the Mobipocket versions.)  Check it out.

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4 Responses to “Kindle Thoughts”

  1. Boris Legradic Says:
    April 9th, 2009 at 11:26 am

    I’ve always been waiting for the price of (epaper) ebooks to come down below the 300$ range. I might’ve bought a Kindle were I in the states - but here in Switzerland we are underprivileged.

    However, lately I have been reading book after book on my iphone. Of course the screen is a bit small, but for novels it is alright. It is bright enough that you can read in full sunlight, and since I charge the phone each day anyway, battery consumption is not an issue. Via Stanza I have access to the Gutenberg Project if I need something new to read quickly. And I have it always with me, whereas I probably wouldn’t shlepp around yet another gadget. Well. I probably would. But I’d complain about it!

    Anyway, to distill the above: I probably would still buy a Kindle-like thing whenever it will come out in Europe, but only at a fairly cheap (sub 200$) price!

  2. Dan H Says:
    April 10th, 2009 at 8:06 am

    Uh, you CAN buy books on the Amazon web site, download them to computer and load them to the Kindle by USB. In fact, I used this method to get my daily L.A.Times fix while on a trip to Europe a couple of weeks ago.

    All you have to do is to go your Amazon account, click on “Manage My Kindle” and all of your content is listed and available for download.

  3. Mike Brotherton Says:
    April 10th, 2009 at 1:38 pm

    Well, I’m a dummy then…as a former engineer, I always feel like things should be obvious or intuitive, and if I can’t figure it out in 30 seconds or less, it doesn’t exist.

  4. Dan H Says:
    April 10th, 2009 at 3:29 pm

    I’m with you on this one; it took me a while to figure this out as well. I’m technically literate and - you’re right - it should be a little more straightforward.

    But, at any rate, it can be done pretty easily and I guess that’s what matters.

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