Got Kindling?
The ebook world is in a strange state of quiet paralysis today, while it chews on the details of Amazon's announcement of the Kindle this morning. I'm still chewing and will be for some time, but I'll lay out some thoughts. Here are the Kindle's broad strokes:
- It's an e-ink display device, of a size similar to the Sony Reader.
- It connects to Amazon via Sprint EVDO, a cell wireless technology available mostly in the US, but pointedly not in Europe.
- It allows Web access through EVDO.
- It's a top-to-bottom system, and mostly a closed one; very much the conceptual cousin of Apple's iTunes. You can't shop anywhere but Amazon, and existing ebooks in non-Amazon formats (including MOBI, remarkable) will mostly not be loadable/readable.
- It has a private (non-Internet) EVDO-based network called Whispernet, and Kindle users will be able to email other Kindle owners and send them files through Whispernet (Such messages are extra-cost items.)
- It has a new "native" file format, AZW, which is very similar (how similar is still unclear) to MobiPocket, which Amazon owns.
- It has a (crude) keyboard, which allows for reasonable shopping, bookmarking, and Web access.
- There is an SD card slot and some sort of USB bridge to a PC, details unclear.
- It costs $400, with no additional monthly wireless cost. All you pay for is the content, some of which (newspapers and magazines) is in monthly subscription format.
This is like nothing we've seen tried in the ebook world so far, and it deserves a serious shot. The wildest part is its use of EVDO, which means never having to ask, "Where's a hotspot?" Unless you're out in the serious boonies, you should be able to get connectivity. The cost of the connectivity is not billed separately but is baked into the cost of the content; when you pay $10 for a NYT bestseller, part of that goes to Sprint to pay for bandwidth used to shop for and buy the book.
That said, the cost of the content is less than a lot of what I've seen in the past. EBook versions of popular books have sometimes sold for as much as (sometimes more than!) a paper edition, which is insane. Amazon tells us that NYT bestsellers will never cost more than $9.99, which is a huge step in the right direction. The Atlantic sells for $1.99 a month, a price I would gladly pay, though I'd miss the color and the resolution in their artwork. Interestingly, Amazon will be selling blog access to big-name blogs like Slashdot, Instapundit, and BoingBoing for $0.99/month.
So what do I think? My early bullets:
- Sure, it's expensive, but I think affluent people understand that you're not buying the slab; you're buying a system. If the system is smooth enough, a certain number of people will buy it and use it religiously. Whether there are enough of those people to keep it afloat won't be known for awhile.
- Don't underestimate the draw of periodicals. Having Forbes, Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times magically appear in your briefcase in time to read on the train to work will appeal hugely to a certain time-pressed demographic, one with plenty of money. This is the reason they can charge for blogs found free on the Web: EVDO brings blogs down when you can't or don't want to screw with a full computer and yet don't want to read something on a 1" diagonal cell phone screen.
- Incompatibility with other ebook technologies has a lot of people screaming, but the ebook business is still so small that Amazon can grit its teeth and ignore the yells. There just aren't enough rabid ebook readers out there yet to make this a killer issue. They're trying to create a business the same way Apple created a music business. MP3s have been around for a long time, but it took Apple to create a top-to-bottom business around digital music. People bitch about the closed nature of the system, but they bought it in droves. Amazon is big enough to make it stick in very much the same way.
- It's really all about big names, not obscure writers and outlets. This bothers me some, as it will focus more attention on fewer titles and worsen the "winner takes all" culture of book retailing that has been a problem for a decade now.
All that said, I think it could work, and nothing I've seen so far is enough of a problem to prevent its success. I may have to buy one, though the size of the screen and its lack of PDF support (a lack driven by the screen technology) makes me hesitate. I can read computer book PDFs and CHMs on my Tablet PC, and that's an ability we won't see on systems like Kindle for awhile yet. I'm skeptical that the considerable cost of EVDO won't force Amazon to raise prices or eventually charge a monthly bandwidth fee, but who knows? Maybe the EVDO cream-skimming era is over.
The biggest single thing to realize about Kindle is that Amazon is doing it. Damn few other firms could make it work. I still need to find out what hoops publishers have to jump through to get into the Kindle catalog, but as I said, Kindle isn't about small publishers. It's about a system, and so far, from the perspective of mainstream consumers, the system looks good.
I reserve the right to change my mind, but I'll report my insights here as they arise.