I'm interested in Amazon's new eBook--not interested enough to pay $399 for one, but if anyone at Amazon wants to send me one to try out, I will be happy to report the results to you readers.
But of course, what I'm particularly curious about is how well the thing is selling. The Kindle is bound to have significant network effects; how valuable it will depend substantially on how many people use it, since that will affect not only how many titles there are, but whether the service is suddenly discontinued leaving you with a pretty white rock that's not even heavy enough to make a good paperweight.
I thus, naturally, turned to Amazon's sales rank system. But Amazon has found a way to neatly protect this valuable information from prying eyes: the system helpfully informs me that the product is "#1 in Kindle Store".
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA....
Kinda' like I'm my wife's favorite husband?
As I mentioned elsewhere, this thing will be cool once it gets hacked, and essentially loaded with a RockBox firmware that will allow you to load all SORTS of information onto it, including .RTF files.
"leaving you with a pretty white rock"
MM,
have you even seen the thing?
you should link a pic, or rather:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000FI73MA/ref=pd_sl_aw_manual-1_kindle1_40650458_1
'pretty' wouldn't make my top10 of adjectives...
also, since AMZN is publicly traded, and it seems that they just released it, we should hear, about its sales progress, soon enough..
I understand that they sold out in under 6 hours....
In the Amazon forums about the Kindle, there was an interesting comment by a guy who bought videofiles from the discontinued online service of Amazon. Once this business was closed, all licences were revoked and because of DRM he can't watch the videos he BOUGHT (not rented!) anymore. And now think twice: Do you want to bet your book budget on the chance that the Kindle service will still be around in, say, ten years (maybe you're the kind of person that reads books and then throws them away)? Do you read so many books that investing 400$ in what is essentially a rebate (on average, but some ebooks are even more expensive than in print!) makes economic sense to you? Are the small advantages of ebooks important enough for you to generously overlook all of the flaws of this very 1.0 version device (ugly design, unergonomic handling, inconvenient conversion methods, only page view screen (no scrolling), makeshift MP3 'player', proprietary technology limiting customers choices to a single source, etc)?
Imho this premature, very much one-trick product will be a flop on the market at this price. Maybe Amazon can save the business model by releasing an improved product at a much lower price in the future, but this 1.0 dog won't hunt.
Well, even if the service was discontinued, one could still use it as a reader, reading off of the SD card reader.
Its value would of course be far lower, but by then it'd have depreciated to about nothing anyway, knowing electronics history.
(Gray seems to miss the marketing point, which is that it's an electronic book. It's not an all-in-one mobile device. It pages because books page, not scroll.
And nobody's limited to a "single source", since it will take MOBI files and even plain old text straight off an SD card, according to both the documentation and user reports.
Yes, if their service dies and Amazon decides to not free-up the content [or at least the public domain stuff; they probably contractually can't make the "bestsellers" free], you'll lose your content when your Kindle dies and the content that's keyed to it is rendered unusable.
[At least, that's my understanding of how their DRM system works; I've seen no reason to believe it does per-read check-ins. Since Amazon can trivially sign the content specific to your known Kindle hardware, that would be pointless and more expensive, so why would they?].
On the other hand, I don't think that's a big deal for most of the market that'd buy a Kindle in the first place. Who re-reads a bestseller in five years? And if you want to, you can buy it in paper, used, and still have paid less in total than buying it new in paper!
I won't be buying a Kindle, but not because I'm worried about DRM abandonment - I'm just not their target market.)
The interesting development will be if there's a "Kindle Document Maker" released so that people can make their own pretty-formatted Kindle books. If that happens, what little DRM worries one has left can evaporate; even if Amazon folded tomorrow, at that point, you could have not just content, but pretty*, well-formatted content, as long as the hardware lasted.
(* As Virginia Postrel might say, aesthetics are value. It's easier to read well-formatted text than a dump from a Gutenberg etext file.)
Link Exchange Request
Dear Webmaster,
We are not spammers and are against spamming of any kind. We are Sending this mail with sole intention of link exchange for mutual Benefit. If you are not interested in Link Exchange then you can reply Simply "NO", we will never contact you again.
In order to increase user traffic, we need to exchange links with site Like yours. Please first add the following site details which suits to your site theme and let me know your details and link back URL where you have placed our details...
Please first add my link
Our preferred link detail is as follows:
Title : Kindle Conversion | Kindle Formatting | Kindle Publishing
URL : http://www.itglobalsolution.com/mobipocket/amazon-kindle-ebook-conversion.htm
Description: ITglobalsolution is eBook conversion service provider company provides reliable and cost effective solution for your Kindle eBook conversion. Our Kindle eBook conversion rate is quite reasonable and we can produce any volume of given work in given TAT.
Your link will be placed within 24 hrs after receiving your mail.
Please feel free to contact us and let me know if your link needs any Modifications or improvements.
Regards and Thanks,
Subhash
webmaster@itglobalsolution.com
The Kindle is a new and exciting product with lots of features that may not be easy to figure out since it is different from a PC. For the latest news, tips, hints and help, go to http://kindlehelp.bravehost.com.
For a great place to discuss the kindle and other ebook readers go to http://forum.ereadworld.com.