kindle2 - some thoughts on ebook reading

[MahrinSkel]

They say they lost a lot of money on the Simple Touch, apparently a touch-sensitive ePaper device I never even heard of, much less considered.  I have a Nook Tablet, but I got it mostly as a cheap Android tablet (that I can easily convert to generic Android), not as an eReader.

--Dave

[Nebu]

Stupid question:  I got a Kindle fire for Christmas and I have no idea what to do with it.  I don't want to use it for books as I prefer to have a paper copy.  I guess I could use it for magazine subscriptions, but that seems rather wasteful. 

Can you tell that I don't want or own an iPhone/Android?   

[Quinton]

Install a photo viewer app and use it as a digital picture frame?

[Nebu]

Install a photo viewer app and use it as a digital picture frame?

I got one of those as a gift 4 years ago... it's still in the box too.

[Merusk]

Return it to Amazon, use the credit to buy lots of books you want.

My company gave us all Kindle Touches for Christmas and the 63 year old exec. assistant of the Hospitality group returned hers because - as she put it - "I don't need the damn thing at my age."

It apparently took a little wrangling but it can be done.

[Ingmar]

Have you *tried* reading something on it? I was pretty skeptical once too.

[Merusk]

To be fair to him, I chose to buy the wife a Kindle vs the Fire (before I knew what we were getting) because the Fire is LCD and not e-ink.  Vastly different reading experiences from everything I've seen spoken about.  One is like staring at your laptop the other is still page-like.

[Viin]

... Every B&M bookstore should be a Print-on-demand library. Walk in, browse the kiosk for the book you want (or ask the clerk to help you do so), put your order in, come back in 30 minutes to have a professionally bound paper back hot off the digital presses. ...

While I generally agree with you, I also enjoy finding books on bookshelves and flipping through them. (Especially nonfiction and reference). Plus, the whole place wouldn't smell like books! Interesting covers also catch my eye and will get me to look at a book too.

Have you tried "browsing" Amazon for a book? Yeah, it doesn't work unless you really specifically know what you want.

[Quinton]

Have you *tried* reading something on it? I was pretty skeptical once too.

I love my e-ink kindle.  Not terribly impressed with the experience on the Fire by comparison.

[Numtini]

Have you tried "browsing" Amazon for a book? Yeah, it doesn't work unless you really specifically know what you want.

Before the kindle I used to browse in amazon for books all the time. But since then, there's too much shovelware and people buying up old classics (most likely to duplicate what they have in paper) to really make much sense of it all. Oddly, this means that books are about the only thing left I don't browse on amazon.

On the Fire, I'm considering getting one, but as a replacement for our netbook for browsing the web and imdb in the living room, not for reading books.

[Quinton]

Unless cost is your driving consideration, I'd hold off on the first generation Fire.  Performance is pretty meh, the touchpanel is not so hot, and the power button is awkwardly placed and a little touchy.  I think the 7-8" tablet form factor has a lot of potential, but Amazon did not quite deliver here.  It's possible some of this may be improved by software updates, but the touchpanel and power button issues feel more like hardware than software limitations.

I was expecting gen1 Fire to be a bit rough around the edges, like the original Kindle, but they managed to underwhelm me even with that expectation.

[RhyssaFireheart]

... Every B&M bookstore should be a Print-on-demand library. Walk in, browse the kiosk for the book you want (or ask the clerk to help you do so), put your order in, come back in 30 minutes to have a professionally bound paper back hot off the digital presses. ...

While I generally agree with you, I also enjoy finding books on bookshelves and flipping through them. (Especially nonfiction and reference). Plus, the whole place wouldn't smell like books! Interesting covers also catch my eye and will get me to look at a book too.

Have you tried "browsing" Amazon for a book? Yeah, it doesn't work unless you really specifically know what you want.

What Viin said.  Just perusing bookshelves is a great way to find something new, IMO, rather than just clicking through pages of books lists online.  I'm also attracted to what's on the cover and really enjoy seeing some artists I really like do different covers, or even seeing some interesting artwork and looking up the artist to see what else they've done. 

I've found trying to browse for books online to be annoying, actually.  I've decided to stop at a bookstore, look around to see if there is anything I want, and then I'll see about picking it up for my Nook tablet instead.  Because the browsing categories for Nook books annoys the hell out of me.  I pick Science Fiction and Fantasy and somehow, that seems to include a whole host of books I wouldn't shelve in that category (like Stephen King's newest book, or a "steampunk romance").

[Sky]

Looks like Barnes and Noble is circling the drain due to heavy losses imparted by the Nook. 

I find it sad that the eBook readers are going to lead to the downfall of two big box retailers which represent the end of the local bookstore as we know it...I'm going to miss old fashioned books and bookstores. 

It's ironic in a way, because the big box book chains were the downfall of the local bookstore as we knew it.

I bought the fiancee a Fire for xmas. She's glued to it, but mostly for Words with Friends.  Apparently everyone in the country got ebook readers for xmas, out of 1800 titles available from our digital collection, I think there's a couple hundred available right now, mostly children's and urban romance nonsense.

Unfortunately, I'm pretty much not allowed to play with it, so I don't know how well it reads. She seems happy but is only just getting into her first book on it. I did like that you could f13 it up with white text on a dark background, that was so easy on the eyes. At work I try to swipe it and use the wifi analyzer. Wish it wasn't a walled device, a few android apps I'd like on it that aren't there.

As usual, I'll remind people that we still have libraries in most places.  Our 'new book' browsing section is still the most popular area, it's where I find a lot of stuff (a new Paul S Kemp SW novel...WHY), and in non-xmas crush a lot of that content is available in the digital collection. So do physical browsing, then whip out your device and use Bookmyne to check it out or place a hold digitally on our free wifi.

The main problem is douchey publishers (really, Penguin?) and price gouging for new books and bestsellers limiting what we can purchase. We're a wicked progressive library stuck in a conservative system, but we're getting there.

[Yegolev]

Stupid question:  I got a Kindle fire for Christmas and I have no idea what to do with it.

Amazon Store
Angry Birds
Graphic Novels
Amazon Store

Seriously, though, the Fire screen is easier to read than the normal Kindle if you use it for books with pictures.  I haven't gotten a recent report from my wife on hers, so there may be more to tell.  I think I'm in a similar situation as you except I'm not very opposed to reading non-physical books.  I'm not denying the appeal of them, but I've accepted the drawbacks along with the convenience of having lots of reference material in a very small physical space.  Whether it's a web site, PDF on my laptop, or a pretend book on my Kindle, as long as I can check the fact I'm looking for I'm fine.  Having it remember what page I was on is also nice.

[naum]

Have you tried "browsing" Amazon for a book? Yeah, it doesn't work unless you really specifically know what you want.

Before the kindle I used to browse in amazon for books all the time. But since then, there's too much shovelware and people buying up old classics (most likely to duplicate what they have in paper) to really make much sense of it all. Oddly, this means that books are about the only thing left I don't browse on amazon.

On the Fire, I'm considering getting one, but as a replacement for our netbook for browsing the web and imdb in the living room, not for reading books.

I still "browse" Amazon -- be it top lists or RSS feeds (it's hidden but you can setup RSS feeds for various categories) or even algorithmic recommendations and "what other people bought after looking at this".

I love my Kindle touch (just gave the old 3G Kindle to my dad) but it is still a poor facsimile of a printed (if it is a quality publication -- as ebooks take over, sadly, most print books now are lacking in quality -- both paper stock and the method of printing which when done too cheaply, is a lesser reading experience than the eInk) book -- especially books with charts and pictures, for which the Kindle is annoying or useless (in that regard, the iPad, in .epub format) shines. Also, while the Kindle Touch UI has improved light years over early versions, and turning pages flip fast enough for my taste now, flipping around the contents or searching still is not as nimble as it should be.

Then there is the proprietary "library" lock-in -- after amassing hundreds of Amazon Kindle selections, am I really able to jump over to a Barnes & Noble Nook device (even if their "library" holdings ever came up to par with Amazon)? There should be a law or some sort of external economic incentive/disincentive imposed to enable owners of these devices to swap in & out with rival ebook providers.

[Baldrake]

Then there is the proprietary "library" lock-in -- after amassing hundreds of Amazon Kindle selections, am I really able to jump over to a Barnes & Noble Nook device (even if their "library" holdings ever came up to par with Amazon)? There should be a law or some sort of external economic incentive/disincentive imposed to enable owners of these devices to swap in & out with rival ebook providers.

This a serious theoretical problem, but not a practical one at all. With Calibre and the appropriate third-party plug-ins, it is trivial to format shift even DRM-locked books. You should really be backing up all your books in Calibre regardless, particularly if you're buying them from the smaller sites (i.e., anything that isn't Amazon.)

[rattran]

Getting ebooks from 'all the ususal suspects' and using Calibre to put them on the kindle is great. I prefer hardbound in general, but for reading old fiction stuff without either having to dig out the paperback from some random shelf in the house, the kindle can't be beat.

That said, I'm reading Mandelbrot's Fractal Geometry of Nature again, and without being able to flip easily back and forth to the plates, it just wouldn't be as good.

[HaemishM]

Perusing bookshelves is nice... but market realities are going to make that absolutely impossible within the next 20 years if not sooner. That's part of why big box retail chains put the little guys out of business. They can afford to buy and have shipped 5000 copies of a book to get a sharp enough discount that it makes the cost of shipping that much stuff trivial. These days, the discounts aren't good enough and there's not much fat to trim out of the system - not to mention the fact that having that many copies on the shelf squeezed a sizable portion of the content providers out of the market entirely (the death of the mid-list novel). Big box chains are the only ones that can afford that much space to store enough physical goods to make the location profitable with such a small selection. However, a POD store could have a wider, broader selection, have lower overhead and give the publishers (and by extension the authors) more money instead of having to pay 40% to Ingram to do nothing more than stock and ship a collection of paper with words on it.

As a self-pubbed author with a POD book, I can sell 1 paperback through expanded distribution (i.e. through Ingram). The paperback is priced at $11.99. My POD gets 20% of that price - Ingram gets 40%. On a book I have to charge $12 for, I get $1.91. If I had a publisher, it'd probably be half that which means the publisher (if you add half my cut and the POD's cut) would probably get about $3 out of the $12, Ingram would get $6, I'd get $1 and the bookstore would get $2. Those are CRAZY BAD numbers for everybody involved.

Cut out Ingram's 50%, and suddenly there's another $6 to split between author, publisher and POD bookstore. If the distributors like Ingram had half a forward-looking brain, they'd get into the digital content serving business - i.e. they'd be the guys the bookstores would contact to download the POD digital files for printing.

[naum]

Then there is the proprietary "library" lock-in -- after amassing hundreds of Amazon Kindle selections, am I really able to jump over to a Barnes & Noble Nook device (even if their "library" holdings ever came up to par with Amazon)? There should be a law or some sort of external economic incentive/disincentive imposed to enable owners of these devices to swap in & out with rival ebook providers.

This a serious theoretical problem, but not a practical one at all. With Calibre and the appropriate third-party plug-ins, it is trivial to format shift even DRM-locked books. You should really be backing up all your books in Calibre regardless, particularly if you're buying them from the smaller sites (i.e., anything that isn't Amazon.)

The Calibre "solution" is also a "theoretical" one. My results in converting books have been mixed at best, with various glitches and formatting bugs that arise (and admittedly, this is a ereader problem still and a major annoyance that Kindle books costing nearly (or more) as much as printed books contain hyphenation errors or words smashed together).  Also, the practicality of doing this on a collection of hundreds of books negates the inherent utility of an ereader where it should be a push-button simple task.

[Zaljerem]

Not very fond of this next generation of e-readers. They're underpowered, locked down, locked in Android tablets. You may as well get a full-blown tablet and use whatever Kindle/Nook/etc app instead, it'll end up being more useful.

[HaemishM]

Not very fond of this next generation of e-readers. They're underpowered, locked down, locked in Android tablets. You may as well get a full-blown tablet and use whatever Kindle/Nook/etc app instead, it'll end up being more useful.

This.

[Salamok]

Then there is the proprietary "library" lock-in -- after amassing hundreds of Amazon Kindle selections, am I really able to jump over to a Barnes & Noble Nook device (even if their "library" holdings ever came up to par with Amazon)? There should be a law or some sort of external economic incentive/disincentive imposed to enable owners of these devices to swap in & out with rival ebook providers.

This a serious theoretical problem, but not a practical one at all. With Calibre and the appropriate third-party plug-ins, it is trivial to format shift even DRM-locked books. You should really be backing up all your books in Calibre regardless, particularly if you're buying them from the smaller sites (i.e., anything that isn't Amazon.)

The Calibre "solution" is also a "theoretical" one. My results in converting books have been mixed at best, with various glitches and formatting bugs that arise (and admittedly, this is a ereader problem still and a major annoyance that Kindle books costing nearly (or more) as much as printed books contain hyphenation errors or words smashed together).  Also, the practicality of doing this on a collection of hundreds of books negates the inherent utility of an ereader where it should be a push-button simple task.

This is where I have zero qualms about torrenting, if I already own it in another format then all bets are off.

[Numtini]

I've had absolutely no problems with converting commercial books using calibre with the exception of PDFs and those were mainly the fault of the original material.

[Baldrake]

The Calibre "solution" is also a "theoretical" one. My results in converting books have been mixed at best, with various glitches and formatting bugs that arise (and admittedly, this is a ereader problem still and a major annoyance that Kindle books costing nearly (or more) as much as printed books contain hyphenation errors or words smashed together).  Also, the practicality of doing this on a collection of hundreds of books negates the inherent utility of an ereader where it should be a push-button simple task.

I guess we have had different experiences, then.

For what it's worth, my first ebook reader was an ePub one. I found the ePub books I bought to have huge formatting problems, and actually became quite expert in the format as I hand-edited practically every book I bought.

Since I switched to the Kindle, I have had effectively no problems, and have never remotely considered figuring out how to edit a Mobi document.

And if you're finding the import to Calibre a chore, you may be doing it wrong. All I do is once every couple of months, download all my new books using Kindle for PC, and then it's literally a single drag from my kindle books folder onto the Calibre window.

[Draegan]

I haven't had an issue with the Kindle Fire's power button.  You can rotate the Fire in any direction, I just hold the tablet so it's at the top.

The only thing that is finicky is plugging it in.  Seems the port is a bit bigger than necessary.  The rest of the things is great... web browser and e-reader.  I kind of like the size too.

[Sky]

I haven't had an issue with the Kindle Fire's power button.  You can rotate the Fire in any direction, I just hold the tablet so it's at the top.

Er....that means you have an issue with the power button if you have to use the device upside-down. I do the same thing, but some apps don't like that.

I got to use it for a minute two days ago. To show her how to turn off wifi to conserve battery life. One minute. At this rate I'll have to ask her to get me one for my birthday if I want to use it.

Oh, she hates the battery life.

[Nebu]

Update:  I found out what to do with my Kindle Fire!  I play games and bought a few magazine subscriptions. 

I don't know what else to do with it.  I like to read real books.  I have my laptop when I travel as I need it for the computing power for the work I do.  If I'm not traveling, every place I go I have a desktop workstation with high speed internet and a good video card. 

Why do people buy these things?  It's like a kid's toy.

[Bann]

I received one for Christmas, here is my take so far. I've read 4 books on it so far.

On the plus side, I certainly do not mind reading on a kindle fire vs. an actual book. I do a good chunk of my daily reading in bed before I fall asleep, and I definitely prefer to hold a fire instead of a hardcover book. I'm still at a point in my life where I rent apartments and move every year or 2 and the idea of not having 10 + boxes of books to move and then find space for is very appealing to me. I've also gotten some utility usage out of having it on the couch while playing something on ps3 and pulling up gamefaq's instead of walking to another room or getting a laptop up and running.

On the (potentially) negative side, I do not love paying for books! For the last few years, I have gotten most of my materials from the library. I understand that many libraries let you electronically check things out to devices. Also, I feel weird if I try and poop with a tablet. I'll stick to magazines in the bathroom. Finally, Bejeweled 2 can go fuck itself with its requirement that I enter a name for a high score after every game.

[Draegan]

Update:  I found out what to do with my Kindle Fire!  I play games and bought a few magazine subscriptions. 

I don't know what else to do with it.  I like to read real books.  I have my laptop when I travel as I need it for the computing power for the work I do.  If I'm not traveling, every place I go I have a desktop workstation with high speed internet and a good video card. 

Why do people buy these things?  It's like a kid's toy.

Hand held web browsing on the couchl, toilet, and in bed.

[Merusk]

Update:  I found out what to do with my Kindle Fire!  I play games and bought a few magazine subscriptions. 

I don't know what else to do with it.  I like to read real books.  I have my laptop when I travel as I need it for the computing power for the work I do.  If I'm not traveling, every place I go I have a desktop workstation with high speed internet and a good video card. 

Why do people buy these things?  It's like a kid's toy.

I strongly suspect that's the same reason people buy any touch pad.  All I ever hear about is game <xyz> or app <abc> from those who own them of any stripe (Fire, iPad, HP Touchpad, etc).   It's another entertainment device that happens to let you read e-books.

I'm enjoying the kindle touch from time to time. It certainly hasn't increased my time spent reading but it's let me start on some old classics I didn't want to buy copies of.

[Ingmar]

99% of the use I get out of my tablet is RPG pdfs. 

[Yegolev]

Niche use, for sure.  Playing Arkham Horror means we have to open the PDF on the television.

[Johny Cee]

Update:  I found out what to do with my Kindle Fire!  I play games and bought a few magazine subscriptions. 

I don't know what else to do with it.  I like to read real books.  I have my laptop when I travel as I need it for the computing power for the work I do.  If I'm not traveling, every place I go I have a desktop workstation with high speed internet and a good video card. 

Why do people buy these things?  It's like a kid's toy.

Hand held web browsing on the couchl, toilet, and in bed.

Seriously. 

I read a large number of news sites, forums, etc. hunched in front of my monitor now, and I mean read.  I've considered a tablet just because reading the same things on the couch or in a lounge chair sounds like a vast improvement.

[Soln]

99% of the use I get out of my tablet is RPG pdfs. 

How do you get your pdf's?   USB cable? 

[Ingmar]

I keep them in my Dropbox and grab them via the Dropbox Android app over Wi-Fi - although at this point all the ones I regularly use are just stored on there now.