« The best sentence I read today, circa 6:36 a.m. | Main | Division of labor in the Babylonian Talmud »
Ezra Klein on Kindle
At the end of the day, the true advances won't come in the Kindle, but in the content. Just as the capabilities of the device will shape what authors decide to do with it, so too will the decisions of authors shape the evolution of the device. The Kindle as homepage already features videotaped testimonials from such literary luminaries as Toni Morrison, Michael Lewis, James Patterson, and Neil Gaiman. But what the Kindle, and Amazon, need is not their kind words, but more of their written words, composed with an eye toward the possibilities offered by electronic text. Just as the early television shows were really radio programs with moving images, the early electronic books are simply printed text uploaded to a computer. Amazon could use its unique position to change that.
Here is more. Here is Megan McArdle on Kindle: "Best thing since sliced bread." Here is me on Kindle, before and after trying it.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on May 10, 2008 at 11:31 AM in Books | Permalink
Comments
I am really considering buying a Kindle, but I'm weary because I've heard a lot of rumors of an updated version or price cut coming. Anyone have any suggestions? I'm going to China for the entire summer, so the wireless would be useless there. I figure I'll wait until September and buy one then.
TYLER - You need to get in touch with Amazon and get Marginal Revolution on the Kindle blog list. And make sure it's $.99 not $1.99 ;]
Posted by: patrick at May 10, 2008 2:39:14 PM
Really, the content is most important part. So far there are just little more than
120 000 books there and speed at which they are added less than 10 000 per month is not impressive ( started with 80 000 in November and now, almost 6 months later 120 000 ), hopefully it will grow.
I envision the day, when Kindle store has millions of books and they start to be available in such countries as russia. I do not think that someone will dare to stop ebook reading in country, but currently there are just few books which reach russians.
I really envy all you discussing different new books. Of cause I can and I do buy them at amazon ( but with duties and delivery it costs almost twice the US price ), but most russians would not move this directions - the price barrier is to hight and even now only few have credit cards accepted worldwide. So bringing them an opportunity to read at discount price seems to me will really change the country. At least people will see - how stupid and malicious are our political and business leaders - for ex I'm really tired of endless stories of 'bad westerners' which 'always hated russians' 'and tried to steal something'.
Books by Clark , Mokyr and by blog authors and others will allow to asks questions against propaganda.
During census about 1/5 of people told that they could read english without dictionary, so even without translation the coming of such a device to russia along with a department of Kindle store will help my country to change in better direction.
So I wish all the success to Kindle, to grow in book size and eventually appear everywhere in the world, including my country.
Posted by: Sergey Kurdakov at May 10, 2008 2:57:45 PM
The marketing and response to Kindle remind me more of Segway/Ginger/IT (adored by wonks and celebrities but overhyped) than the iPod or iPhone (everyone wants one).
Posted by: Paul N at May 10, 2008 4:08:56 PM
i got a kindle for christmas. i read it every day, along with weblogs, newspapers, hard copy books,
magazines, cereal boxes, language flash cards, etc. my wife hoped the kindle would reduce the amount
of paper coming into the house. no such luck, for her. the thing has some drawbacks, but i tend not
to be too critical: i liked the food in the marine corps. it's really good on trips: now i don't need
a second knapsack for books. the kindle is like listening to books instead of reading them. different,
but still good. but maybe i'm the wrong person to comment. i stand with logan pearsall smith: "some people
say life's the thing, but i prefer reading."
Posted by: andrew at May 10, 2008 6:53:50 PM
OK....another Luddite skeptic, but:
Books don't last that long/100 years? Any university library has a LOT of old paper that is hanging in there pretty well. Nicholson Baker pretty much debunked the argument that paper doesn't last. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Fold
Where does Google Book fit into this paradigm? They are going to have electronic copies of everything in university libraries soon enough, with the IP issues TBD.
Doesn't anybody still prefer reading the NYT's in paper form? That's what Starbucks is for.
I can remember reading a discussion on the Project Gutenberg site about the advantages of .txt. http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:File_Formats_FAQ#ASCII_.28Character_Set.29
On the other hand, I'm all for it. I guess I am too jaded to be an early adopter. Someone really has to work out the technical user interface issues that still favor paper. Once that's done, it will be copied in a open format and lights out for the intermediaries like Amazon.
Posted by: ziggurat at May 11, 2008 8:38:00 AM
Another plus for electronic publication. All those books that started out as lengthy magazine articles and could have been a great 100 page read won't have to be padded out to 400 pages to call them a book.
Already one advantage of ezines is that the author doesn't have to worry much about length and not at all about how it is edited to fit into a printed page around advertising.
Posted by: ziggurat at May 11, 2008 9:22:20 AM
