WordJames's Mind

Kindle Power

The first generation Amazon Kindle ebook reader, still less than a year old, is catching on. Even I have one now.

My problem with ebooks has always concerned distribution and rights. The companies distributing the stories go out of their way to make buying books difficult and expensive so their customers will be unable to share among themselves. As a potential author, I don't have much problem with people sharing provided somebody along the way actually buys the book.

In the past, many ebook distribution systems relied on proprietary formats. That presumably restricts sales to those able to produce works using that format, often a single company. I don't want a machine so restricted. At first I thought the Kindle used a proprietary format, so that only Amazon could produce books for it, but a little research showed me that their format is an Open Document format similar to MobiPocket (which the reader will handle like a native format) but with DRM (Digital Rights Management) added. That means that over 10,000 public domain books produced by Project Gutenberg can be downloaded to the Kindle, some of them as collections directly from the Amazon Web site.

Past distribution systems also assumed that once a customer was locked in to a particular, expensive book reader, that customer would pay any price to get books to read on it. It costs almost nothing to produce an ebook compared to what it costs to produce a dead tree book. It is almost a byproduct, free because it was produced as a necessary step in the production of the physical book product. The electronic form of a book should cost less than the physical form, if only because it's cheaper to produce. It is also easier to distribute, so there should be no shipping or handling charges.

Amazon is the first company to get the distribution system right. You can purchase a new book from their Web site, using either your computer or the Kindle itself, and it gets delivered electronically in about a minute through Amazon's WhisperNet system. You can also convert PDF or HTML documents to MOBI format using a free program and download it to your Kindle through its USB port. Or you can send a document in Word, PDF or HTML format to your Kindle as an email attachment and Amazon will convert it to MOBI format for you and send it to you using their WhisperNet system.

Amazon also got the pricing right. The vast majority of new books are available for the Kindle for under ten dollars.

Authors say they get paid better for Kindle versions of their books than for physical copies. Sales are better and the percentage of the selling price they get is better. And the Kindle hasn't really caught on yet.

There are problems with the first generation Kindles. Many of them will not survive even a short fall and the supplied cover fails to retain and protect the machine after a few months of use: the elastic band gets stretched out and becomes insecure. Amazon needs to redesign the cover. If you buy a Kindle, you should seriously consider replacing the Kindle cover with a third party cover.

Electronic ink, the Kindle display medium, is at present available only in monochrome; color would be nice but isn't really necessary for reading books. I'm sure, though, that color displays would be popular and that many people with monochrome Kindles would upgrade if color became available.

The basic Kindle will hold about 200 books. Adding an SD (Secure Digital) memory chip extends this by probably 10,000 books. Counting the individual books included in public domain collections, I probably have over a thousand books on my Kindle right now. Some of the books are pretty large: the Charles Darwin collection includes versions 1, 2, 3 and 6 (the classic) of his "On Species" as well as every other book or study he published. I'm ready. I bought four SD cards. One is in my Kindle, two in my Palm TX case and one in its original plastic holder ... because the Kindle case has no place to store them.

So far, I've had to charge my Kindle about once a week. I'm reading a lot more, too.

I've sent the novel I'm working on to my Kindle. I plan to send the novel whose first draft I just finished, too. Eventually, everything I write should be stored on my Kindle and its SD card.

There are Kindle forums. I've joined a Kindle discussion list run by Yahoo.

The Kindle movement is growing.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Kindle Power

The first generation Amazon Kindle ebook reader, still less than a year old, is catching on. Even I have one now.

My problem with ebooks has always concerned distribution and rights. The companies distributing the stories go out of their way to make buying books difficult and expensive so their customers will be unable to share among themselves. As a potential author, I don't have much problem with people sharing provided somebody along the way actually buys the book.

In the past, many ebook distribution systems relied on proprietary formats. That presumably restricts sales to those able to produce works using that format, often a single company. I don't want a machine so restricted. At first I thought the Kindle used a proprietary format, so that only Amazon could produce books for it, but a little research showed me that their format is an Open Document format similar to MobiPocket (which the reader will handle like a native format) but with DRM (Digital Rights Management) added. That means that over 10,000 public domain books produced by Project Gutenberg can be downloaded to the Kindle, some of them as collections directly from the Amazon Web site.

Past distribution systems also assumed that once a customer was locked in to a particular, expensive book reader, that customer would pay any price to get books to read on it. It costs almost nothing to produce an ebook compared to what it costs to produce a dead tree book. It is almost a byproduct, free because it was produced as a necessary step in the production of the physical book product. The electronic form of a book should cost less than the physical form, if only because it's cheaper to produce. It is also easier to distribute, so there should be no shipping or handling charges.

Amazon is the first company to get the distribution system right. You can purchase a new book from their Web site, using either your computer or the Kindle itself, and it gets delivered electronically in about a minute through Amazon's WhisperNet system. You can also convert PDF or HTML documents to MOBI format using a free program and download it to your Kindle through its USB port. Or you can send a document in Word, PDF or HTML format to your Kindle as an email attachment and Amazon will convert it to MOBI format for you and send it to you using their WhisperNet system.

Amazon also got the pricing right. The vast majority of new books are available for the Kindle for under ten dollars.

Authors say they get paid better for Kindle versions of their books than for physical copies. Sales are better and the percentage of the selling price they get is better. And the Kindle hasn't really caught on yet.

There are problems with the first generation Kindles. Many of them will not survive even a short fall and the supplied cover fails to retain and protect the machine after a few months of use: the elastic band gets stretched out and becomes insecure. Amazon needs to redesign the cover. If you buy a Kindle, you should seriously consider replacing the Kindle cover with a third party cover.

Electronic ink, the Kindle display medium, is at present available only in monochrome; color would be nice but isn't really necessary for reading books. I'm sure, though, that color displays would be popular and that many people with monochrome Kindles would upgrade if color became available.

The basic Kindle will hold about 200 books. Adding an SD (Secure Digital) memory chip extends this by probably 10,000 books. Counting the individual books included in public domain collections, I probably have over a thousand books on my Kindle right now. Some of the books are pretty large: the Charles Darwin collection includes versions 1, 2, 3 and 6 (the classic) of his "On Species" as well as every other book or study he published. I'm ready. I bought four SD cards. One is in my Kindle, two in my Palm TX case and one in its original plastic holder ... because the Kindle case has no place to store them.

So far, I've had to charge my Kindle about once a week. I'm reading a lot more, too.

I've sent the novel I'm working on to my Kindle. I plan to send the novel whose first draft I just finished, too. Eventually, everything I write should be stored on my Kindle and its SD card.

There are Kindle forums. I've joined a Kindle discussion list run by Yahoo.

The Kindle movement is growing.

Blogged with the Flock Browser