As a writer who is also a gadget freak, I've been watching the progression of ebook technology over the last few years with great interest. Sony and others jumped into the space, attempting to create an electronic device that, proponents argued, would eventually replace the paper book. The response from the reading public ranged from underwhelmed to unaware. If an ebook reader is launched on the market and nobody reads it, does it matter? Answer: Noooooooo.
All these years later, Amazon.com is desperate to launch an eBook reader that sticks. The stakes are high for the world's largest online bookseller; a business model similar to the lucrative iPod has a quite an allure. No shipping costs, for one. The possibility that consumers will make more impulse purchases when they can have their book right away, for two.
A couple of years ago Amazon launched the "Kindle", it's proposal to end the ebook argument once and for all. Amazon spent a lot of time with its supplier figuring out "electonic paper", to give a reading experience as simple and easy on the eyes as a real piece of paper. But the first generation Kindle looked ridiculous, like a block of Romano cheese sliced by a distracted teenager. It did not give off a "cool" vibe, it was black and white, it had technical limitations on how to get books and how many you could keep. The screen was black and white, which means the graphic design of many a book is generally lost on its Kindle copy. Oh, and it cost $350, which is, to be blunt, a deal breaker for most of the potential audience.
This last week, Amazon attempted to rectify some of this by launching the second generation Kindle. Reviews have been mixed (see Cnet's roundup for a variety of perspectives). Most acknowledge that the device has now entered into the general ballpark of "cool" - it's incredibly thin, and can now be slid neatly into a business portfolio. It hooks in, free of charge, to a 3G wireless network, allowing users to download books from almost anywhere near a city. It looks, at first glance, like a promising advance.
But-you knew there would be a very big "But" in an ebook discussion - it still costs $350. There are iPhones that cost less than that, even without a carrier subsidy. It is still only in black and white. So for me at least, Kindle will remain an interesting device I won't purchase. And it remains out of the price range that many students can afford, and still doesn't offer textbooks - textbooks are in my view the "killer app" that will propel the Kindle forward some day.
This iteration of the eBook has gotten closer to true "book replacement" functionality than we've been before. And that being the case, it's well past time to talk about what this means to publishing. Amazon has the potential to become, like Apple, a single, proprietary distribution point for an entire art form. Apple has only recently lifted its restrictions so that users can now play iTunes purchases on non-Apple products. The lifting of DRM (Digital Rights Management) lockdowns from iTunes is a major step forward in creating a market for music that is not firmly in the hands of one corporation and its interests. When everyone else does the same - and you can download music from a variety of "stores" to play on your iPod - the unlocking will be complete. Amazon's model is like iPod 1.0 - proprietary format, proprietary player, single point of purchase. Issues of censorship and corporate control of intellectual content will loom large if this platform manages to really take off before these restrictions are eased. Let's hope the Kindle eventually follows the same path as the iPod. Will Sony Reader owners one day be able to purchase books from Amazon? Will Barnes and Noble be able to sell an ebook for the Kindle?
These concerns all assume, of course, that the Kindle, or any ebook, will actually take off. With an estimated 500k units out there (and nobody really knows for sure) it seems like a small installed base - but keep in mind, selling 100,000 copies is a lot in the publishing world, and the purchasing habits of Kindle users are not known to us. Do they buy more than they did before the Kindle? If so, the impact may be already be greater than we realize. And then there's the dark horse in all this, the new "Shortcovers" app for mobile phones. Its impact may also be large, as the iPhone and others have spent more time on decent color screens - and a color screen is still something the Kindle lacks.
I'll keep my eye on the Kindle and let you know if any new developments crop up.
Below: begging raven from my recent trip to the Grand Canyon.
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