Comments on: Joining The Kindle Fray

By: Abram

Abram — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 04:36:58 +0000

I don’t like the idea of making content proprietary, but I am–have been for quite some time–excited about e-Ink technology. What I’d like to do is check out all the e-Ink readers on the market and do a comparison.

I have put a Kindle ad on my site. Can’t afford it, really. If I earn enough through referrals, perhaps I’ll buy it.

By: Clive Warner

Clive Warner — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 04:57:38 +0000

Am I the first to notice that there seems to be a complete “disconnect” here?
A **retailer** imposing DRM on its customers?

Until now, DRM – which I detest – has been the preserve of OEMs such as record labels. NOT retailers.

I can see it now … I buy the latest novel from a B&N store, and the checkout person says, “oh, wait a min, I haven’t DRM’d that novel yet” – (passes novel through large machine resembling a photocopier on steroids, sounds of riffling pages) – “Here are your special reading glasses sir!” – gives me a set of plastic specs to allow me to read what now looks like a random mixture of red and green blotches.
“And don’t lose the glasses, sir! They won’t work with any other books!”

By: GSlusher

GSlusher — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 11:31:53 +0000

Two points:

- Amazon is a bit disingenuous when they compare the price of a Kindle book to the FULL retail price. They should compare it to the price THEY charge. I did that for the first 10 $9.99 Kindle books listed on the first day it was released. The average “savings” was about $6.05, as I recall. That means it would take about 65+ Kindle books to “pay” for the Kindle. (It will take a lot more if you buy the cheaper books.)

- One thing about the Kindle that makes it very different from the iPod (or the Zune, Zen, Sansa, etc.): you cannot “rip” a book you already own to the Kindle, as you can with CDs, videos, tapes, LPs, etc., and the iPod and its competitors. If you have a stack of unread books that you’d like to get for your Kindle, you will have to pay full price for them, AGAIN. Amazon should charge a much lower price–say $2–for the Kindle version of a book you previously bought from Amazon, but they don’t and I don’t really expect them to.

By: Kirk Biglione

Kirk Biglione — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 18:27:57 +0000

I’d be willing to bet the $200 per book is the cost of converting the digital content to Amazon’s proprietary file format and encoding it with Amazon’s proprietary DRM.

By: Robyn

Robyn — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 18:16:37 +0000

Jeff, I bet the $200 is sort of like how apparently at the big corporation where I work, apparently it costs $2k for six people to sign off on a cable for manufacturing. The $2k doesn’t include design or manufacturing, it’s just the time that it apparently takes for six levels of approval for any tiny thing to happen. And I think it includes overhead on all their cushy offices.

By: Jeff Johnston

Jeff Johnston — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 17:37:43 +0000

Ok I run a small press myself and we will be publishing eBooks first and formost and print books as the second run. I have to say why does digitizing cost approximately $200? Publishers have digital copies now, its not like we are using old Gutenburg presses now, everything is digital, turning a digital product into a digital product is minimal cost and effort.

What I don’t like about the Kindle (besides its sheer ugliness) is the DRM, the books offered at LilleyPress.com will be DRMless, we have no intention of “treating customers like criminals”. Unfortunately I will be listing the books we publish on the Kindle store, it just burns me that to do that I will have to let Amazon determine the DRM scheme.

I think the Kindle will do more to harm the eBook industry then to help it.

By: Shannon

Shannon — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 15:20:21 +0000

Thanks for this helpful review. Here’s one more thing: What does Kindle offer me that the traditional and much loved (at least by me) book format does not? What does Kindle offer that makes up for the things that reall books provide and it cannot, such as the aesthetic quality of books, the ability to easily trade them or give them to others, the long “shelf life”? It would be a motivating factor if I thought authors were going to be more fairly compensated because of the lower costs of e-publishing, but your article suggests that is not going to be the case. As far as I can tell, the printed book still rules.

By: Jim Murdoch

Jim Murdoch — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 11:47:47 +0000

I have to say I was please when I heard that Amazon was going to carry the torch for electronic books. It’s what the cause needs. How the hell did they manage to get it so wrong? It’s fixable, of course. Just look at all the different covers you used to be able to get for mobile phones. The guts are all the same. They have to make their product cool so that people are clamouring to get one like they are with the iPhone.

They should chalk all this up to market research, probably quite expensive market research, but nothing they can’t afford.

By: Edward Champion’s Return of the Reluctant » More Bloggers Weigh In On Kindle

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 01:20:11 +0000

[...] have arrived and this post serves as an addendum to the previous report. First off, I should note Kassia Kroszer’s quibbles, which led to this report from Joseph Weisenthal, who pointed out that the only way one can access [...]

By: Eoin Purcell

Eoin Purcell — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 20:22:32 +0000

I’m just not sold on this.

I tried to keep an open mind but it is just ugly, damn expensive and practically useless.

It is tired before I have even gotten it into my hands and generally, I just see not future for it.

But that could just be me!
Eoin