I was both excited and disappointed yesterday upon reading about the upcoming availability of the Amazon Kindle 2 e-book reader. My spouse and I are both avid readers, and in a perfect world, we'd like to each own one. In reality, Amazon has disappointed us, and I think we will wait a while until we take the plunge.
The Original -- Kindle 1.0
When the original Kindle was released in November 2007, I was psyched. The thought of carrying around an entire library of books in a compact, easy-to-read, easy-to-use form factor was very enticing.
As a techie, I love the bleeding-edge, and I absolutely love new gadgets. This thing was right up my alley.
Unfortunately, at $399, it was a little out of my price range, although I still thought it a deal when compared to the cost to purchase "dead tree" versions of books. I also felt that this premium price did not reflect the fact that this was a first generation product -- with all its warts and glitches. So I waited patiently.
In May 2008, Amazon dropped the price by $40, to $359. While this was a definite improvement, it was still more than my "discretionary funds" budget could handle. So I waited some more.
More books were released in Kindle form, including some of my computer books (you know, the $50 -$75 books that are about 2-3 inches thick). Still, I waited.
The Rumors -- Kindle 2.0
Fall of 2008 brought with it the news that Amazon was preparing a new version of the Kindle, smaller, lighter, more memory, better features, etc. Typical of most technology industry rumors, this was to be the greatest device since sliced bread. It was also rumored, or perhaps it was more like speculation, that Amazon would introduce the new version with a lower price. While several ideas were batted around, the general consensus was that Amazon should/would sell the new one for $299, making it available to a larger potential audience.
Now I was getting excited. A price that was entering the upper end of my budget, improved features, and still more books available in Kindle format.
The expectation was that Amazon would release the new Kindle in time for the holiday shopping season. Christmas came and went, still no Kindle, and worse, Amazon had exhausted their supply of the original version. Then in January, the scuttlebutt was that Amazon was preparing a major announcement in early February. What else could it be? The rumor mill started churning again, stirring up all the original buzz over features and pricing.
February 9, 2009 -- The Reality
In a press conference held at the Morgan Library in New York City, Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Founder and CEO, announced the availability of Kindle 2 as of February 24th. I won't rehash the details here, as they can be found many other places on the web, but this was definitely an evolutionary device, not revolutionary like the original. They made many updates that make the new version a better value & more usable.
Unfortunately, they also left a lot of the expected (rumored) features out. There are two main ones that bother me -- memory expansion and backlighting.
There is no memory expandability. In this day and age, so many consumer devices have the ability to store data on and/or use memory cards and devices to expand capacity, Kindle does not. There is just no excuse in my mind for this omission.
There is no backlighting in the unit itself. If you want to use the Kindle in low-light conditions (i.e. reading in bed), you have to purchase a separate backlight, just like you would for a "dead tree" book. This is an electronic device, why couldn't they include such a feature?
Kindle Economics
One of the tech journalist/bloggers that I follow is Jason Perlow over on ZD Net. Back in November, he wrote an article about the economics of Kindle. Yesterday, upon the release of Kindle 2, he revisited his original concept.
While Perlow is not the only one to have made a cost analysis of Kindle ownership, I think he makes some good points. The fact that Kindle would be a wonderful (maybe even perfect) solution for education, especially Higher Ed, and that Cost vs. ROI is not worth it for the average user, are two main takeaways from his article.
Perlow calculated that the average college student could recoup the cost of a Kindle within 3 semesters. Some disciplines would see break-even sooner, some later.
In his ROI analysis for the average user, Perlow determined that a reader would have to purchase and read six books per month to break-even after a year (assuming that you would normally purchase that many books -- if you read that many books in a month, it is likely that you are not purchasing them, but rather borrowing them from a library).
The Potential of Kindle
I think the whole concept of e-books, and readers like the Kindle, is in its infancy, despite the fact that e-book technology has been around for a while. The major hurdles facing manufacturers of these devices are user convenience and price.
From all that I have read, the Kindle is the closest device on the market to achieving user convenience. It is the closest device to the size, feel, and readability of a "dead tree" book. The ever-present availability of the Kindle store via the Sprint WhisperNet service makes it that much easier to purchase books and other media (newspapers and magazines) anywhere, anytime.
However, Amazon has not even come close to realizing an affordable price point with the Kindle. This is an even higher obstacle to overcome with our current economic downturn. Rather than being a book reader for the average person, this is an extravagance that many cannot afford.
I suggest that Amazon reevaluate their pricing on this device in order to expand the market. By reducing the price, more people will make the investment. Therefore, more publishers will make their works available in Kindle format. Logically, more people will purchase more books and devices when this happens, resulting in more money for Amazon.
Let us not forget the economies of scale in manufacturing costs when they can build more units, or the cost savings when they are selling electronic versions of books that they no longer have to stock and ship to customers.
I may not be an economist, but this seems to me a somewhat simple way for Amazon to make more money.
The Bottom Line
As I said at the beginning of this post, I love the thought of owning a Kindle. However, when I look at the overall return on my investment, I'm not so sure that it is really worth it at the current price point.
In fairness to Amazon, I have not yet had the opportunity to have any hands-on time with either the original or the newly released, updated version. Since I am not a mainstream journalist, I doubt they will honor my recent request for a review unit, but we will see. I would really like to give this thing an opportunity to win me over, but I cannot take that chance with $360 of my hard earned money.
Have any of you had the opportunity to own or use the original version? If so, please leave me feedback below. I watch and reply to these comments, so tell me what you think. I'd like to get some feedback on the new version as well, once those make their way into the wild.
You cannot purchase from the device but this way you can order, download and read the books until amazon realizes they can sell more if they lower the price.
I have both an iPhone and a Touch and can put the books on both. Also, if I'm reading on one and switch to the other and open the same book it will let me sync to the proper page so I don't have to scan looking for the right page.
You only get a paragraph or two at a time but I use to read my eBooks on a Windows mobile handheld and got use to the smaller form factor.
Unfortunately, my budget has not supported the purchase of a Kindle, and even more so when I look at the ROI.
I am very encouraged by the fledgling e-book reader industry, and look forward to the day when I can carry all of my IT reference books on one device, along with leisure reading material. I was disappointed that Amazon seemed to drop the ball when it came to improving the previous version.
I have been corrected on the expandability of the Kindle 1, but I have yet to see any indication that the Kindle 2 has the same expansion capability. Fortunately, I will have the opportunity to see first hand in the next week. Amazon has agreed to send me a review unit for 10 days. Look for my review of the Kindle 2, based on first-hand experience in the next couple weeks.
However, I was under the impression that grayscale was possible. I thought I had seen screen shots that showed photos and such on the screen.
As I have been chosen by Amazon to review the Kindle 2, I will definitely check this out.
Please watch for my Kindle 2 review in the next couple weeks.
That said, why didn't Amazon offer Kindle with a credit for 35 free e-books? Or why not offer a $1 credit towards e-books for every $25 in paperbound books bought on Amazon? Or some combination of discounts and credits to entice readers to own a Kindle? (the first year of the NYT free, or the same offer for magazine subscriptions). Bundling of these discounts and credits would make the Kindle a "pay-for-itself" proposition almost immediately--or at least present a clear path to that for the consumer. So why hasn't this happened?
It's because no publisher would partner with them to absorb some of the costs of offering these credits/discounts. The publishers are terrified of e-books . They don't want the Kindle to succeed. E books should be a gold mine: there's no inventory, no freight and warehouse costs, and NO RETURNS (publishers sell their books to retailers with full return credits for unsold merchandise). The only costs are for advertising, and promotion. So publishers still have to take some risks in promoting a new author or new ideas that haven't taken hold yet. But they always had to do this.
Why should they offer 35 books for free? You already get them discounted. Why does everyone think they should be entitled to free stuff all the time? Kindle's subscriptions and book prices are very reasonable.
for the Wall Street Journal, a normal subscription price (and NOT the new subscriber rate you see advertised) is $450 a year for print and online. It's $10 a month ($120 a year) on the Kindle.
There's your savings. Everyone wants free this, free that. I admit, the Kindle has me buying books and newspapers exclusively from Amazon. I don't mind. Amazon's been great for me, and I think the prices are reasonable. And you have to admit, it's a damn smart business strategy.
The rest of your post goes straight to the issue I have been discussing here in the comments about the nature of DRM, and its competition with fair use rights.
I would think that a computer-based application would not only protect the consumer's rights to the fair use of the material, but it would also go a long way towards helping the cause of e-books.
MarketWatch.com article excerpt about Kindle 2:
Eric Ginsberg, vice president of marketing at BookSwim based in Newark, N.J., agrees that pricing is key. His company rents books, much like Netflix Inc. rents movies, and eventually plans to also embrace the downloadable content model. But for now, with the economic recession closing the pocketbooks of most consumers, Ginsberg said his company's business is doing well as a service renting physical books.
"More and more people are subscribing to BookSwim because they want to keep living their lives, but they want to have budgets," Ginsberg said. "We are following [e-book vendors] Amazon and Google and Sony but mostly right now it's hype."
I will have to check this out.
I've owned a Kindle since Nov 2007. I love it. It got me reading again (I am 40 years, old, was a voracious reader up to early 20s)
I had concerns about storage, but really, are you going to have 50 frickin' books on your Kindle at once? No. They will all be in your Amazon library, and if you want to get to one, you go download it. No problem. Traveling overseas? Take 20 books,without even denting the built in storage. Do you really think you'd read 20 books on a 3 week European vacation? If you do, you probably shouldn't take that trip. You'd wast it reading your Kindle.
DRM? I so rarely pass books around, I could care less about DRM. If I really, REALLY wanted a non DRM copy of a book, there are other ways to get them. But hell, I don't mind paying $10 for a latest bestseller. Not at all. That's a work lunch for me. So DRM? Come on.
$359 is a lot. But for me, what I get out of a Kind can't be analyzed in a return-on-investment-cost-analysis spreadsheet. I did not hesitate to sign up for Kindle 2. It will absolutely be worth it for me.
The whole idea of the electronic ink is for the Kindle to be like reading a book - meaning you need to have a light source to actually read it. The backlight in other gadgets is what causes eye strain.
I never have more than 20 books in my Kindle. Why would I want to clutter my Home page when I am done reading them? I remove all the books that I have finished reading and let them sit at Amazon's servers. I don't even need to add an SD card.
And while I do appreciate that I can get the books at a discounted price for Kindle that is not the only factor that I consider when I compute my ROI on my Kindle device. To me the convenience of being able to carry this small and light device with several books, built-in dictionary, not to mention the extras, and the ability to buy books whenever, wherever I want is the top most reasons for getting a Kindle. I also like the fact that I can read a book on Kindle without needing to use both hands or even one hand!
I cannot wait to get my Kindle 2!
However, I tend to disagree with this argument for several reasons.
First, a mobile device has the drawback of a small screen. I have a Palm Treo, and have tried to read e-books on it, but it is not convenient, and the small font size strains my eyes.
Second, the use of a PC/Laptop has the drawback of mobility/convenience. The only "real computer" that might fit the bill is a Netbook.
Third, with the technology available today, Amazon should be able to come up with a lighting option that is energy- and space-efficient, that won't over-strain your eyes.
As for memory expansion/storage, I am not as concerned about being able to carry a million books with me as I am about data redundancy. I am an IT consultant, and am a firm believer in Save Early, Save Often and Frequent Backups. While I like the convenience of the Kindle bookshelf to hold my purchased materials, I am always leery of someone else being responsible for keeping my backups for me.
Watch for an upcoming post from me about DRM.
I will also agree that you cannot simply make the decision to purchase based on price or cost analysis, but it is a starting point. Unfortunately, until you have experienced using one, that is all you have to base your decision on.
I do have to say that the price of the Kindle bothers me no more than the price of the iPhone, iPod or iTouch has on their users. And with the wealth of free books (i believe there is a 1 million number being thrown around), I could read free for a year while recouping the cost of the Kindle.
As it is now, this device is for readers and not the one book a month reader. I used to buy at least 3 new release hardbacks a month and now my average book cost (over last 10 months) is $6.39 so you can do the math.
I wouldn't give up my Kindle to go back to paper books and find myself rationalizing on keeping the 2nd Kindle for reference books instead of giving it to my daughter; but you have to use one to appreciate it. I am not saying its the best thing since sliced bread, but then again, when was the last innovation in the book world!
--jh www.knuckleheadnetwork.com
As a kindle user of several months, I think there are substantial problems. But these are general to reading on devices--they happen when I read a PDF on my computer as well. It is hard to riffle back to a page to review what you have already read. For a student this would be lethal. You need to be able to shift back and forth to understand the concepts better.
Kindle is good for novels, bios and other light reading without graphs or charts. that proceed from beginning to end without need to review what has been read.
Backlight is what causes eye strain and so is intentionally taken out of the equation. You would not be able to read for a long time if your eyes are hurting, would you? The electronic ink is specially used to simulate as if you are reading a physical book. Hence, as when you are reading a book, you need an external light source like a lamp or natural daylight.