Kindle & the future of eBooks
There were precursors, such as Sony’s Reader, which was released almost exactly one year before Amazon’s Kindle. And eBooks have of course existed long before that. But the Kindle, as both a hardware platform with a paper-like E Ink screen and a format for distribution, gives the eBook ubiquitous credibility with the masses similar to what the iPod gave portable digital music devices.
It hasn’t been all positive press for Amazon’s Kindle, however: “Recently Kindle owners who had purchased George Orwell’s 1984 or Animal Farm had their books snatched back by Amazon when a rights issue arose. The buyers were credited their $9.99, but such a recall could never have happened with actual books.” (NPR)
The irony of retracting Orwell’s book should be apparent to anyone familiar with it. I also wonder if the name Kindle was chosen to pronounce the death of traditional print media, with paper books becoming “kindling”. I don’t think the world is ready for that to happen though. I consider the Kindle to be an interesting product, but I find its cost to be prohibitive ($299 or $489 depending on the model, with electronic books costing nearly as much as their print counterparts) and I’m not ready to give up my usual paper books quite yet.
Do you own a Kindle or other eBook reader? Do you think eBooks will eventually replace paper books?
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I got interested in kindle when i first started using kindle for iPhone. I was unable to read the amazon ebook on iPhone for long hours due to the small screen and it was glaring to the eyes. I decided to research on Kindle from various blog sites and eventually decided to buy kindle 2 to try out.
I am amazed by Amazon Kindle 2 E Ink technology. Nothing out there comes close to kindle 2 and amazon large range of e-book titles.
The advantage of ebooks is immediacy, especially in the case of less common or hard to find out-of print books. Kindle isn’t interesting when Whispernet is U.S. only. Sony has been around longer, with a Reader in Japan many years ago (eInk has been around for near a decade), and they have a better approach to letting me load whatever content I own. They just announced two new models, which have me interested. eReader’s may never replace paper books though… the price makes reading in the bathtub prohibitive.