101 Reasons to Stop Writing

(I could cram a lot more pyro puns in there, but I sense you’re already groaning.)

The new Amazon Kindle, next to a pencil, which isn’t included. Or useful.

Pundits have been predicting for years that ebooks and ebook devices will eventually, finally, once and for all free us from the tyranny of having to carry around more than one book when we travel. This neotopian vision of a paperless, rights-managed future took one giant stumble forward last week with the launch of the Amazon Kindle ebook reader.

For those of you who think that books made of wood just aren’t portable enough, and want a book that you can’t loan to a friend, will be utterly ruined if you drop it in the bath, and looks like it was made by the props department from Space: 1999, then perhaps the Kindle is for you.
Whither the name ‘Kindle’, I’m not sure, but I think any word that connotes ‘burning’ probably shouldn’t be part of a book product promotion (unless you’re promoting International Slushpile Bonfire Day).

The Kindle looks small and convenient when placed on a volume of Encyclopedia Brittanica

GalleyCat has a nice roundup of the early coverage. Much of the press has focused on the (oogly) design, the not-so-great price point for downloadable books (compared to library books you don’t keep either, or to paperbacks you can keep), the lack of support for the .epub format the publishing industry is getting behind, the fee for converting your own documents into the Kindle’s proprietary format, and the fee for reading newspapers and blogs that are free on the Internet.

What’s not being discussed much is that, gadget-lust aside, you’re paying US$400 to be locked into a book club.

The ideal Kindle buyer, and really the only person who could squeeze value for money out of the deal, is the frequent traveller who regularly buys hardcover books but doesn’t want to keep them, likes to read newspapers but could do without the paper bit, can’t be bothered walking over to the airport newsstand or bookstore, and is completely disinterested in participating in the ‘pass it on’ economy.

If you do regularly buy hardcovers, the ‘Kindle Editions’ are around $15-18 cheaper than the list price, but Amazon often sells those hardcovers at a discount already, so you’re only saving $5-10 — which means you’ll need to buy at least 40 books to ‘break even’. If you’re a regular paperback reader, you’re only going to save a couple of dollars off each book, so unless you expect to buy well over 200 books in the next few years, you’re paying a premium for the convenience. If you regularly buy secondhand, you’re too much of a cheapskate to even consider a Kindle.

One of the big selling points of the Kindle is its wireless connection to the Amazon store, allowing you to buy and download books in less than a minute. It uses an existing radio-based broadband service instead of WiFi so it can connect virtually wherever you can get a cellphone signal (in the US) — indeed, almost anywhere you could take a book. Amazon is eating the cost of this service, which is why they’re charging you to read blogs. As author Seth Godin discovered, they don’t want to include any free content, even (in Godin’s case) at the author’s insistence. They’re probably only breaking even on the hardware, so they need to turn a profit on every transaction.

Since you asked, my cash is staying in my pocket (ok, technically in my overdraft) until an ebook reader meets at least a few of these criteria:

• A clamshell design with two display screens (you know, like a book)
• Purchase and download books at bricks-and-mortar stores
• Freely download the text of books I already own
• Option to ‘return’ (delete) a finished book for credit, or ‘give’ the book to a charity
• Recommend books to friends with similar device, with free sample chapters
• ‘Trade’ books among friends at discounted rate
• Something that doesn’t look like a broken control panel from an air conditioning unit

Ebooks are not going to ‘replace’ paper until they fundamentally improve on the experience of reading. That has to include improving the experience after you finish reading the book.

Ebooks potentially offer publishers (and authors) the opportunity to make money on the secondhand book market, and this isn’t being exploited. Instead, they’re trying to force customers to change the way they think of books, which is only going to result in making reading an even less attractive pastime than it is now.

Postscript: The photo at right, featuring Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, ran in NewsWeek’s evenhanded and objectively critical article on the Kindle launch, “The Future of Reading“. The photo was taken by Nigel Parry / CPI for Newsweek.

I include it here as an example of what can happen when your PR people don’t read the excerpted text closely. Roll your mouse over the image and you’ll see what I mean.