I will start out by saying that I do not have a Kindle, nor have I had the opportunity to play with one. These thoughts are based on what I have seen/read about it and some general thoughts on the subject of ebooks.
When the Kindle came out I was very excited. Think of an ebook reader with support by the company where I buy most of my books anyway… not a bad idea. It looks pretty cool and the reviews seem generally good, but as I have thought about it over the year or so since it came out, I have found some sore spots.
Right out of the gate, there is the price of the unit itself, which has not changed much since its inception, $359 is a bit pricey for me, but I tend to be cheap and its a one time purchase, right. Well, I wonder about that. The Kindle 2 came out not that long ago and you know 3 has to be in the works now that eInk supports color. I saw nothing about trading or upgrading your old Kindle 1 hardware for the newer model so if you want the new one, bang, another $350. That’s a big turn off for me.
Another down side I found, and probably the biggest one in my opinion, is that the books for the Kindle cost around $9-10, while that is not much more than your average paperback book, it is a lot considering that you can only read it on the Kindle and you cannot lend or sell it to anyone else. So, you are paying a little more for each book and getting less functionality from it. A side note is that this would start to kill the “used book” market, which is good for Amazon but not for all those stores and their patrons.
My final thought here is about your current library. If you are a big reader you probably own quite a few books already. On buying a Kindle, I would imagine you want to use it. It would be great for traveling, on lunch breaks, etc. Okay, I want to read such and such book but oops I have that as a physical book… I really want to read it on my Kindle though because I am going on a long flight. You either read it the old fashioned way or you shell out $9 for a digital copy of it. I would think that Amazon could make a real killing with the Kindle if they started a physical book trade in program. You “sell” them your physical book and then you get the digital copy for a small fee, like $2 or something reasonable. That then ties users to their product without totally robbing them along the way. I guess an alternate approach would be to just sell the book(s) to a used book store, but often they don’t really give you much, especially for one or two books.
I love the idea of the Kindle and some day I will have one, or something similar. I am starting to collect a lot of ebooks that are a pain to read on the computer, of course I have also heard that bringing other formats into the Kindle has its issues too. I will let it come together a little more to get the hardware and usage bugs ironed out. Hey Amazon, I am ready to convert everything to digital, just give me some love!
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