kindle2 - some thoughts on ebook reading

[Jeff Kelly]

I don't want a goddamn EVDO/GSM/UMTS/'insert stupid mobile phone standard here' module.

1. GSM only is too slow for book downloads and the kindle store. UMTS modules are expensive and draw a lot of power.
2. You need a contract with a mobile phone provider that includes a data plan in order to use it. GSM/UMTS data plans are still fucking expensive in Europe.
3. W-LAN is cheap to install and there are already a shitload of public access WIFI networks all over the world that you could use. Hell in the city most people that read somewhere in public are sitting in a goddamn starbucks or other coffee shop with free (or cheap) public wi-fi.

I can buy 4 to 5 books for the 50 bucks that a contract with data plan cost over here.

[Trippy]

2. You need a contract with a mobile phone provider that includes a data plan in order to use it. GSM/UMTS data plans are still fucking expensive in Europe.

No, you don't, at least not the way it's setup here in the US. All the basic connected services are free as mentioned above.

[Salamok]

So what are the release dates like for kindle books?  Do they release stuff as soon as it hits hardback or is it later in the time line like trade paperback or paperback?

[Baldrake]

You can judge this by going to the Kindle Store. Look for the last half-dozen or so books you've bought, and see if they are available for Kindle or not.

I did this myself, and was unfortunately unimpressed.

[Righ]

AFA Kindle goes, price needs to get under $100 to suit me. And the DRM is troublesome but having a persistent mobile EVDO connection is enticing…

As far as I'm concerned, a Kindle is mostly attractive as a device to read content that I'd attach short retention times to. Newspapers & magazines in particular. A delivery subscription the New York Times is $630 per year. The annual subscription cost to the Kindle edition is $168. If you don't value the crossword or other stuff missing from the Kindle edition and want a major newspaper, then the device is currently something of a bargain. When you're just going to be throwing out old newspapers, the DRM is irrelevant and the Kindle makes throwing them out considerably more convenient.

Although the DRM nonsense is off putting for purchasing the sort of books you'd like to reread in a handful of years (your souped up 2015 e-paper device made by Chinese manufacturing conglomerate Walmake probably won't read old Kindle DRM) it is attractive for the sorts of reference books that have short shelf lives - computer stuff which gets superseded by new versions for example.

[Sky]

Righ, thanks for that post. I didn't realize NYT was so deeply discounted for kindle, things that like are one of the better arguments I've heard in favor of electronic devices like this.

[Stewie]

Apparently the kindle is not available in canada :(  Why does america hate us?
I noticed that you can email your kindle email address a pdf and it will convert it for $0.10 per pdf.
This isn't all that bad. There are other options though to convert pdfs for free. From what I understand though the kindle 2 does not nativity support pdf though and when it converts complex pdfs they don't format correctly.

I would love to get one of these if the pdf conversion was easy (a bit of a D&D nerd and would love to have all the books on one of these) and the pdf  conversions looked good.

[Trippy]

Apparently the kindle is not available in canada :(  Why does america hate us?

Blame the multi-national media companies.

[Quinton]

I noticed that you can email your kindle email address a pdf and it will convert it for $0.10 per pdf.
This isn't all that bad. There are other options though to convert pdfs for free. From what I understand though the kindle 2 does not nativity support pdf though and when it converts complex pdfs they don't format correctly.

You can email youraddress@free.kindle.com for a free conversion (mailed back to you instead of delivered over the air).

I've only tried on pdf and it looked okay, but it wasn't very complicated.

[naum]

Apparently the kindle is not available in canada :(  Why does america hate us?

Blame the multi-national media companies.

Same reason DVDs are encoded to region — publishers carving out sections of the globe as "unique" markets for "rights" to be sold…

[Trippy]

Yup.

[sidereal]

I'm going to miss book covers 

I'm on board with the Kindle-suspicious.  I see the benefits of ebooking, and I love that eInk makes it happen without the eyestrain, but I don't want a reader that's so deeply bundled with the content and the bookstore.  I've got books on my shelf that I bought 25 years ago, I have no idea where I bought them, and I don't care.  I need that functionality to be replicated in bits.  Yes, I know I can crack the DRM, but who's to say Amazon won't want to play arms-race and have the reader download mandatory system updates that try (and fail) to fight the cracking?  Making the whole issue a massive irritant.  And maybe I don't want to buy my books from Amazon.  Maybe I like the bookseller down the road.  The bundling is garbage.

Unfortunately, I require a keyboard of some kind, because I think searching is one of the biggest draws of text digitization, and as far as I can tell the Sony readers don't have it.  According to this feature matrix the iRex Digital Reader is the only other e-book that takes input (and with a stylus instead of a keyboard.   ), but it's . . uh. . $859.

So I'm still on the sidelines.

[gryeyes]

If kindle allowed me to purchase the physical book and then use a code to activate the ebook as steam does for games i would pick one up. Expensive and limiting is not a good combination.

[Samwise]

I'd be more on board with the e-book thing if they were significantly cheaper than the physical books.  I don't mind it so much with games because the physical media is such a microscopic fraction of the cost of the game, but if a hardback is $15 and a paperback is $5, I expect an e-book to be $1.

[HaemishM]

Don't expect e-books for $1. Considering most authors make maybe $1 off the sale of each book, unless the author is selling it directly to you, he's going to get screwed. I do agree they should be cheaper than the physical version, though.

[Stewie]

I think that if e-books were 1 - 3$ it might be easier for e-book readers to gain traction and then the "i'm not able to lend/borrow books" becomes much less of an issue. I can just tell whoever "this is a good book, get it" and at this kind of price point they will just grab it themselves. In theory that may be able to sell more books this way. Higher volume/lower price. Not to mention the authors should be getting a higher percentage from e-book sales as the cost to the publisher is reduced to almost nill.

I also see a situation where more and more individual authors will start 'e-publishing' their own works and keeping 100% of the sales. see Raidohead.

I love my books but really, would changing to an e-book reader be all that hard for me? Nope. I think we will always have the traditionalists but by and large we are all going to be moving to an e-book society sooner or later. 

[Samwise]

Don't expect e-books for $1. Considering most authors make maybe $1 off the sale of each book, unless the author is selling it directly to you, he's going to get screwed. I do agree they should be cheaper than the physical version, though.

With an e-book model I don't see why the publisher should be entitled to a significant cut, or even be involved in the first place.  All they're doing is hosting a cheap website at that point.  I can totally understand paying the author $1 for the content and the publisher $9 for the binding when I'm getting a nicely bound book, but I'm not going to pay the same $9 for a fucking download.  The author should be getting the lion's share at that point (and at the same time, he should be getting about as much as he got from the physical book sales, which should mean an overall lower price for me).

[Soln]

Kindle books now on iPod and iPhone

[sidereal]

Kindle books now on iPod and iPhone

No e-Ink = you will go blind.  There's a reason e-book readers didn't take off until the last couple of years even through the rest of the technology has been around for a decade.  Someone needed to develop a dynamic screen that wasn't backlit.

[naum]

Kindle books now on iPod and iPhone

No e-Ink = you will go blind.  There's a reason e-book readers didn't take off until the last couple of years even through the rest of the technology has been around for a decade.  Someone needed to develop a dynamic screen that wasn't backlit.

But what about bedtime reading?

[HaemishM]

Don't expect e-books for $1. Considering most authors make maybe $1 off the sale of each book, unless the author is selling it directly to you, he's going to get screwed. I do agree they should be cheaper than the physical version, though.

With an e-book model I don't see why the publisher should be entitled to a significant cut, or even be involved in the first place.  All they're doing is hosting a cheap website at that point.  I can totally understand paying the author $1 for the content and the publisher $9 for the binding when I'm getting a nicely bound book, but I'm not going to pay the same $9 for a fucking download.  The author should be getting the lion's share at that point (and at the same time, he should be getting about as much as he got from the physical book sales, which should mean an overall lower price for me).

You are correct, he should. For some reason, publishers aren't really ready to agree with you on that one. 

There are some services I've looked into for self-publishing that will give the author a significantly greater cut for strictly e-book publishing, though, so there is hope. The most important thing the publishers bring to the table is the marketing apparatus, something 99% of established authors have no hope of equaling and 100% of new authors will never have a chance to equal.

[Samwise]

I have never bought a book due to the efforts of any sort of "marketing apparatus" operated by a publisher.  With the possible exception of the fucking Da Vinci Code, and I was immensely sorry afterward.  I do almost all my reading based on recommendations from friends and family, browsing at the library or bookstore, Internet searches, that sort of thing.  A book publisher is the last entity on earth I'm going to take reading advice from.

[Johny Cee]

I have never bought a book due to the efforts of any sort of "marketing apparatus" operated by a publisher.  With the possible exception of the fucking Da Vinci Code, and I was immensely sorry afterward.  I do almost all my reading based on recommendations from friends and family, browsing at the library or bookstore, Internet searches, that sort of thing.  A book publisher is the last entity on earth I'm going to take reading advice from.

Marketing isn't just advertising or promotion,  it's the whole chain that takes your prototype from idea to available for general sale.  How do you think libraries and bookstores figure out what books to carry, and in what numbers?

Publishing houses have ready-made services to provide advice, editing, formatting, and advance reading.  They then figure out what market or niche your book fills, and the best way to convince the various booksellers to pick it up.  They get out the ARCs to magazines and trade journals for review and comment,  and now they get them out to the various popular bloggers and reviewers on the internet.  They set up interviews and the works, carry out the meetings with purchasers.

Then,  they might do some advertising and hype promotion, though in the case of books there isn't a whole lot of it except for your obvious best sellers.


Every time you purchase a book from browsing at a bookstore, the marketing apparatus of a publisher has been successful.  It's a long, uphilll battle just to get a new author's book a couple of inches of shelf space at most bookstores.

[Soln]

Kindle books now on iPod and iPhone

No e-Ink = you will go blind.  There's a reason e-book readers didn't take off until the last couple of years even through the rest of the technology has been around for a decade.  Someone needed to develop a dynamic screen that wasn't backlit.

But what about bedtime reading?

it is "lit" just not "backlit".  It's very bedtime (lowlight) readable.

[Checkers]

Oh yea, and PDFs? Who still uses PDFs anyway?

Scientific papers are pretty much exclusively PDF, and I churn through about twenty or so a week.  I have hundreds of them laying around my office, lab, and home.  If the Kindle were able to manage PDF without any inconvenience, I'd expense one in an eye blink. 

[sidereal]

If the Kindle were able to manage PDF without any inconvenience, I'd expense one in an eye blink. 

Expense one of these instead.  It handles PDF just fine.  Or wait a couple of months for the 1000SW, which will have Bluetooth and WiFi built in.  The only thing keeping me from getting one is cost, and if I had an expense account, 

[Baldrake]

Holy crap, those look interesting.

Do you have one? Can I sink back in my armchair and read one without arm strain? How easy is 10pt text in a PDF to read?

In the version with the stylus, can I scribble notes and save them back into some form that I can email someone? (No dodgy handwriting recognition, please, there aren't enough hours in the day for that shit.)

[sidereal]

Do you have one?

No, but I've held one.  So take the rest of my responses with the appropriate amount of salt.

Can I sink back in my armchair and read one without arm strain?

It weighs 1.25 lbs (half a kilo).  I've never weighed a trade paperback, but I'm guessing it's a little lighter than the analog version, especially if it's a Robert Jordan tome.

How easy is 10pt text in a PDF to read?

Pretty easy.  It's a big screen for an e-book reader, and it'll scale a page to the edges.

In the version with the stylus, can I scribble notes and save them back into some form that I can email someone?

Yes, it exports them as PDFs.  Also, it lets you jot notes directly onto other documents and it saves them as a bundle, so when you open up the original your notes (optionally) get pulled up on top.

From what I understand, the big downsides are the price and the fact that the interface is pretty tough to navigate, but the latter doesn't bother me much.  The company is a bunch of linux hacker beards and the device is pretty much what you'd expect to come out of that.

[Baldrake]

That is really, really interesting. If only for the workflow of reading other peoples' stuff, making comments and sending it back to them. Damn, I wish I could get my hands on one - I hate to lay out a thousand bucks for something I've never seen in the flesh. Thanks for typing up that review, sidereal.

[sidereal]

No problem.  Positive review aside, I'm probably holding out for this or this, which should come out this year.  Note the Boox has a stylus as well.

[bhodi]

Sold. It looks like this year I'll be getting me an e-ink pad of some kind.

[Jeff Kelly]

Just bought the comploete Windows development .net Set from Wrox Publishing. 6000 Pages worth of text distributed among 4 Books.

I'd desperately need some sort of e-book device for that stuff otherwise I'll get an hernia from lugging them around.

[Trippy]

Why don't you just get a Safari subscription or buy comp books that have PDF versions?

[NowhereMan]

I really can't afford any of those nice gizmos but being able to get an e-book reader for PDFs would make my life (and environmental impact) better. I get sick of printing out PDFs and piling them in folders or chucking them and also of reading on my computer screen.

[Jeff Kelly]

Safari subscription