So Amazon’s releasing a ebook reader, calling it Kindle, and hoping that it will get the ebook market going. I don’t – and won’t – buy it.For some people who like the experience and have already started reading ebooks, and after reading Michael Parekh’s blog I was amazing to find that there are people who do indeed fit into this category, it’s a good step up from your Sony reader. But for people who prefer the paper copy I can’t see this being a likely substitute.
To begin with there’s nothing really wrong with the classic book reading experience, sure carrying multiple titles with you might be attractive, but how often have you thought “wish I had another book with me”. Finishing a book and not having an alternative might in fact be a good thing as it gives you some time to reflect and meditate on the book.
And sure there are environmental concerns to buying lots of books, but if you buy books from used book stores and give books to used books stores then the environmental impact has to be minimal when compared to, oh I don’t know, cars and airplanes perhaps!?
I also found it really weird that Amazon decided to go into this market (as a manufacturer), they don’t have the experience or the knowledge to manufacture customer goods. And if Apple releases some ebook software for the iPod or the iPhone, heck when the SDK comes out in Feb if someone releases a software program for the iPod or iPhone, that’s got to be more useable, useful and probably will end up more used then the kindle.
Manufacturing consumer electronics isn’t cheap, and the fact that this was a first for Amazon probably meant they started from scratch, lots of costs. With a price point of 400 USD wonder how many they’ll have to sell to actually be ROI positive. Sure the ebooks will help the bottom line, but if the apple devices have software that reads ebooks surely this would have come down their pipe anyway. Anyway will be interesting to see if we’re all using kindles to surf and read books in a couple of years. But I doubt it.
