I originally drafted a post about the Kindle about a month ago but I thought I was being mean – so I let it sit and stew for a while. The release of the Apple 3.0 and some recent comments by Jeff Jarvis has made me dust it off with a quick update:
So there it is sat on my desk with a dead battery – 8 weeks after I bought the second generation ebook reader direct from Amazon. Unused, unloved, unnecessary. I feel like I’ve wasted my money.
My reaction to the whole genre: surely ebooks need a cigarette moment? Ebook manufacturers like Amazon seem to be too busy trying to make faster pipes when people want cigarettes. They seem obsessed with creating shinier pipes when we might actually be looking for an alternative way to get our reading fix that matches our modern lifestyle. If they want to deliver real innovation in the reading space then maybe companies shouldn’t be trying to create a faster book.
Amazon’s Kindle doesn’t work for me because it doesn’t fit my reading, sharing and working habits. Over the last five to six years the way I consume text, imagery and other content has changed. Like the most of you I spend time everyday reading content across newspapers, magazines, blogs and other news feeds. I use that news (from 850 sources). I cut extracts, I send links, I copy images, I share it to Twitter and Facebook, I just let stories hang around deep in my open tabs possibly to be looked at before. And I want to do all this in as little time as possible.
Text to me is not static like the words on a book – it’s fluid, maliable, transferable and more than often temporary.
Sure there’s some copy and paste option but the Amazon Kindle doesn’t offer me freedom to work in a modern way. It wants me to keep smoking my pipe and read like we grew up reading. But now that I’ve learned how to smoke, I want the content-fix on my terms: Rapid, simple, shareable and social.
Jeff Jarvis added some similar comments recently about the Kindle in a post on his blog:
Online, news has been freed from its packaging. Indeed, that is a key architectural underpinning of the web itself: content is separated from presentation. The same text and media can be fed into a web page, or into an iPhone app or an RSS feed. Substance parts company with style. All of which makes me wonder whether we will ever see the iPod moment for newspapers.
News Corp, Hearst and other publishers are reportedly working with manufacturers to develop flat electronic substitutes for their beloved paper. Their assumption is that we are pining for a familiar, nostalgic presentation of content. They hope that when electronic news reminds us of print news – that is, when editors can once more package the world for us – we’ll again be loyal to and perhaps pay for their work and brands.
Sorry, but I think the opposite is occurring. We care less about the form of news and more about the information it imparts. That is the key strategic problem for editors and publishers hoping to charge us online: once news is known, it is knowledge that can be spread through conversation, which means it can no longer be controlled behind a pay wall. News is spread in the speed of a tweet. The half-life of a scoop’s value is lessened but the value of links grows.
Of course, the argument is that Kindle is supposed to be for a certain type of reading – so you don’t have to carry those books and magazines. First of all, if we’re really honest with ourselves: we weren’t really carrying that many books before were we? And when we did, did we really mind if someone saw us carrying the thing on our commute on the London Underground? Wasn’t it actually a badge of pride in some ways. A sign that you had the brains to fill them with words each day.
Secondly, there are many long form books we’ve stopped reading for a reason. We don’t need them anymore. Personally, I can’t stand reading business books – I just don’t need to waste my life scanning static and dating words – words written and rewritten with an overt agenda to improve the author’s image and brand awareness. Ponder this: we all spend hours scanning business news and opinion each day in this office – but not a single one of us will take a business book from the pile we’ve been sent.
Because Amazon thinks the wrong way about innovation, the company believes it has done a good job when it hasn’t. The latest iPhone really reminds us that Amazon is parading its little ebook reader in the emperor’s new clothes. The difference in sophistication between the two portable gadgets is immense. Kindle is Dotcom 1 technology – iPhone is web 3.0 fluidity.
Having said all this I do think that several of our readers seem to like the Kindle – and I do applaud Amazon for playing in the digital reading space – I just think that they need to piggyback technology people are using rather than spend too much time creating something people don’t want.
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I really tried to like the idea of eBook readers in general. Nope. Can’t do it. If I went travelling for a year and there was a solar powered version then and maybe then I’d think about it.
Although last time I went backpacking I enjoyed swapping books and picking up random things to read – anything – as long as it was reading material.
My other worry about networked eReaders is the text can be changed. It can’t be changed in printed books. Think about history revisionists here.
To give an extreme example: ubiquitous eReaders + militant green movent + far right in power = how many people murdered in the second world war again?
June 11th, 2009 at 10:23 am
Insightful article! I agree, but speaking as an owner and user of both Kindle and Ipod Touch (and Kindle DX on order) I think the disconnect here is that the concept of a “one size fits all” device for information consumption does not work. I like long novels, literary classics and have a broad interest in non-fiction subjects which I like to read about in depth. The Kindle works well for this. I need to carry around detailed work documents with charts and diagrams, computer manuals, PDF reports and heavy textbooks. With its larger screen and better resolution, the Kindle DX (hopefully!) will work best for these.
t the same time, I live by RSS feeds, mashups and the latest tech information – the Ipod touch is perfect here. (btw I agree Newspapers and pages that look like newspapers are just stone-age and basically useless – my opinion)
So far, I can find no reader that does it all. A ‘giant’ ipod touch could possibly come close, but backlighting could be a problem. My eyes smart after looking at a backlighted screen for more than 1 hour. I can read for hours with the Kindle and it works great in bright sunlight.
I believe it is absolutely inevitable that print will go digital (in higher education and research, it certainly must) but we are at a a toddler stage in developing a device to truly take advantage of this.
June 11th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
Agreed- Although my gripes with the Kindle stem from a few different sources. I’m not expecting the kindle to be a panacea for all my electronic devices- I like movable, sharable, continuous information as you have outlined above, but to manipulate it properly, I need a proper keyboard and a mouse at the least and hopefully a live connection to the web. My laptop does a pretty good job at this and I use it well in this capacity. I however dont read eBooks on muy laptop. I do agree that there is a need for the eBook device and I await it’s arrival.. So lets look at the kindle as an object that can solely present information form text, and pdf or whatever eBook formats there are.. This the the problem I have with the Kindle. I’m a bit of a bibliophile and I read literature often. I love reading and I love the process of reading. I’m a designer and I love the physical aspects of novels, tomes and even paperbacks, AND I’m willing to suffice some of these qualities for the conveniences e of the eBook. I travel more then I’m at home, mostly to Asia and Europe and every trip lug a few novels with me.. I find myself jet lagged @ 4am and need to read to pass the time until breakfast.. I’d love to have a bunch of different books on the kindle, as I read about 4 books at once- so the kindle seems like a perfect object for a tech-savvy guy with lots of 4am time on his hands, a love for reading and a need to keep the pack light.. But it’s the object.. Its the white fucking plastic object that looks like a SLA prototype with a black screen in the middle. Who designed this thing? had they ever read a book?? had they ever consulted a group of readers to partake in what is good about books? A book has soul, it has a smell, it has a texture, it has a weight (well, we can do without that) but the designes of the kindle managed to remove all the soulful elements of the kindle almost for contempt to these book-like qualities. Not everyone who has a kindle may love these aspects of books, but how about having the ability to have it slide into something that looked, felt and was tactile like a book, or at a minimum have it black to reduce the contrast between a black screen and a white plastic object.. cover the thing in a synthetic leather.. my car’s dashboard in it’s injected leather texture has more soul then the kindle. I dont think it’s possible to be further away form a book like experience then the kindle.. The Sony eBook looks great compared to the Kindle.. Last week in Hong Kong having an after dinner cigar and drink at an upscale outdoor restaurant, I noticed another cigar smell, being attuned to the rarity of cigars; a man a few tables down was smoking a cigar and reading. Upon further notice it was a Kindle he was reading.. It could have been me, as I read often in restaurants if I’m alone, but he was reading a kindle, and it was somehow debasing to witness this. Even if it was the soulful version of the kindle I had referred to which he would have been reading, it was still a bit sad somehow, this progression of technology.. And dont get me started on the name..
June 12th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Haven’t decided where I fall on this one. I am one of those people who gets annoyed about carrying so much paper along with me (packed 3 books, 2 newspapers and a magazine for my 5 day trip to Asia because of the long flights). For that reason, I’m pretty into the idea of the Kindle (haven’t yet purchased one).
I also think it’s interesting in conjunction with a service like InstaPaper. Being able to take the longer articles I’d prefer not to read on the screen along with me in a format my eyes can deal with would be great, but Amazon keeps that part as hard to do as possible …
June 12th, 2009 at 10:09 pm