Not Kindling My Flames
Instapundit links to a critique of the Amazon Kindle’s design–or lack thereof.
Worse than the design though, is that screen. One of the reasons ebooks have yet to take off is, they just aren’t comfortable. And I mean to read, not to hold. (Although there’s certainly nothing about the Kindle that makes you want to reach out and hold it, either.) The problem is DPI. A good book is printed at about 300 dots per inch. At that level, letters are sharp and contrasty and easy on the eyes. Kindle’s screen runs about 160 DPI — easy to read for short periods, but not good enough for a late night page turning session.
My take is, until ebooks can “print” at least 240 DPI, they’ll remain novelties.
UPDATE: I oughta start reading my own blog. Ed Christie (just below) already beat me to the Kindle pile-on.
… and mine is bigger.
What might actually sell, is the same device, except not as ugly, make it touch-screen like a tablet PC, keep the EVD0 connection and bundle it with some sort of a subscription service, similar to what Microsoft has with Zune Marketplace. Make it so for that $10-15 a month I get access to standard online reference materials (encyclopedias, maps, etc.), a couple of magazine chosen from, say the entire list of magazines in the Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes and the back catalogs of major publishers, stuff that’s a few years old and not likely to have a lot of new sales if it’s even still in print. At that point I’ve got a mobile public library, and it’s a lot more compelling.
But Amazon has no reason to do this because they make a fair amount of money on the long tail, stocking books that no chain brick and mortar store will ever stock because the sales numbers are too low. Google, on the other hand, has every reason to do this. They want to digitize every book in the world anyways for searching purposes, so this would just be another way of monetizing that.
I’ve enjoyed using e-book readers in the past, but this thing is just ugly. Back in my PalmPilot days I always had a couple loaded for unexpected boredom periods. It worked, but I always preferred the dead tree version. It’s not the dpi but the experience of holding a book and turning the pages that is important to me. Important enough that I stopped buying paperbacks because the feel of reading a hardback is worth the extra $10-15 if it is an author I enjoy. For me an e-book has a place, but it is the same place occupied by a magazine.
I’d love a simple reader that handled RTF files and HTML that I could adjust the text size on. I’d not want wireless, or much more than a page up and down, text size and a hell of a lot cheaper price than $400!
I’m a rather voracious reader, but reading print now will give me double vision after an hour or so. So lately, I read E-books. I tend toward those offered by Baen Publishing for several reasons. They are cheap ($5-$6 for current print books) you can get them before they go to print ($15 for an E-ARC version with all the typos and undecided portions) and Baen actually encourages you to share the files with no restrictions (other than not selling them at a profit to yourself). They offer some Hardcovers with an attached CD full of e-books. Copy it as much as you please.
Finally, they offer the Free Library at http://www.Baen.com/library
There are even sites that have all the CDs imaged for you to download and at one of those sites, you can read the books online.
There is a reason Baen is one of the more profitable Publishing houses(especially for a scifi/fantasy majority house).
For $400 I’d rather get something else, other than a reader like that.
Not to mention that if you sit down with a paperback in your pocket, you don’t wind up with stitches in your ass.
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Well, now that I
I make a lot of use of Baen too. I’ve gotten to the point where I do far more reading on a display screen than I ever did in print.
I still like books, but the content is far more important to me than the content.
I lov ebaen.
And for freaking $400, I can have a full-function PDA phone. Yeesh