I've mentioned a few times in the past that I'd really like to see The Economist available on the Kindle. Well, now it is. But it's $10.49 a month. Ouch. Newsweek is only $1.49 a month, and they're both weeklies, with about the same amount of content. I was definitely ready to drop my Newsweek subscription in favor of The Economist, until I saw the price tag. They seem to have priced it so that it's just about the same price as a print subscription. I understand the reason why they do this, whether it's with Kindle books and magazines, or iTunes music and video downloads, but I really wish they'd give it up. It's a lot cheaper to deliver a magazine or a newspaper electronically than it is to produce and deliver a physical copy. The price should reflect this.

Labels: Kindle

This is kind of interesting. PC Magazine is now available for the Kindle.

PC Magazine stopped publishing an actual magazine a while ago, and has just been maintaining their web site, and publishing a digital version (which I think is in a weird format, not a PDF or any normal e-book format) since then. And, just this week, it was announced that ExtremeTech, a related Ziff-Davis site, would be shutting down. Or at least almost shutting down. So, I'm wondering exactly what they'll be publishing on the Kindle. I'm guessing it won't look much like the old print PC Mag. It's interesting that they're trying to keep it going in some form, but I wonder if anybody cares at this point. Is anyone interesting writing for it? Do they have enough of a budget to do benchmark tests and stuff like that?

Labels: Kindle

I just bought a supporting membership to Anticipation, the upcoming Worldcon. I'm not actually going to the con; I just bought in so I could get the Hugo packet, a zip file full of stuff that's been nominated for Hugos this year. And, of course, if I manage to read through enough stuff before the voting deadline, I'll actually be able to vote on the Hugos, which is kind of cool.

I haven't read any of the stuff (novels, short stories, or anything in between) that's been nominated this year, though all of the nominated novels have been on my mental "someday/maybe" reading list. I just started reading the PDF of The Graveyard Book, and I'm enjoying that about as much as I'd expected to, given that it's written by Neil Gaiman. The other stuff in the packet is in a hodgepodge of different formats -- PDF, HTML, and RTF mostly. The HTML and RTF files are pretty easy to load onto the Kindle; PDF files are sometimes fine, and sometimes not so good. I'm not even sure when the Hugo voting happens. Obviously, it's got to be before the con, which is in August. So, I've got myself a bunch of stuff to read on the Kindle this summer!

Labels: books, Kindle, scifi

I was just looking to see which Ian Rankin novels were available on the Kindle. Lots of them, it turns out. Weird pricing though. You can buy his novel "Strip Jack" for $5.59, $7.99, or $9.99. I can't imagine there's any difference between these three versions. Looking at them, I guess each is based on a different print edition, but, on the Kindle, it's all going to look the same.

Labels: Kindle

I downloaded the Kindle reader for my iPod Touch earlier this week. I don't anticipate that I'll use it much, since I do have an actual Kindle, but I wanted to play around with it. Given the limitations of the iPhone form factor, the app works reasonably well. I suppose I could manage to read a book on it, but I'm not sure I'd want to.

I think that releasing this app right now was a good move on Amazon's part. There do seem to be a lot of people who are comfortable reading on the iPhone. A good number of e-books have been released as iPhone apps, so apparently there's a market. Amazon might as well pick up some sales this way, and maybe the app will eventually drive some Kindle 2 hardware sales, as people get used to buying and reading e-books, and decide to step up to a dedicated device.

I'm a little surprised that they don't support reading newspapers and magazines via the iPhone app. Maybe it's a rights issue. If I was going to read *anything* on the iPhone, it'd more likely be newspaper and magazine articles, rather than full-length books though.

Labels: Apple, Kindle

A couple of related stories came up this week, and have got me thinking about magazines. I currently read Newsweek on my Kindle, and I noticed an article at the New York Times about how Newsweek is planning a makeover to concentrate more on opinion and less on hard news, and is hoping to attract a smaller, but more affluent, audience. I'm wondering how any of the changes described in the article will affect the Kindle version. They mention that they're looking to raise the subscription price, but I don't know if they'd do that on the Kindle version or just the paper version. I'm currently paying $1.50 per month, which is pretty cheap, but has got to be largely profit for them (no printing or mailing costs). They mention an increasing emphasis on photography, which won't really translate to the Kindle, nor will any changes in layout. Hopefully, the articles will continue to be worth reading. I'm a little worried about the idea that they might go too far into the realm of opinion; I'm usually not that interested in reading other people's political opinions. Right now, for instance, I skip anything in Newsweek with George Will's name on it, or Anna Quindlen's. It's not a matter of agreeing or disagreeing with either of them; I'm just not that interested.

There's a passing mention in the NYT article that Newsweek will be getting a little closer in tone to magazines like The New Yorker. By a bit of coincidence, The New Yorker has just become available on the Kindle. It's $3 a month, twice the cost of Newsweek. The description mentions that it will "usually" include all articles, fiction, and poetry from the magazine, but will only include a "selection" of cartoons, not all of them. I really think the cartoons could translate week to the Kindle, so I'm not sure why they wouldn't include them all. They're all just single-panel black and white illustrations, generally without any fancy grey tones or anything like that. I'm tempted to subscribe, regardless, except that I know I'll fall behind in reading it pretty quickly. Maybe if Newsweek drops off in value for me, I'll switch to The New Yorker.

Meanwhile, The Economist is still not available for the Kindle.

Labels: Kindle

The Kindle 2 looks to be pretty nice, but I don't think I'll be getting one. There isn't enough nifty new stuff to offset the high price. And there are actually a few things I don't like about it: the non-removable battery, the lack of an SD slot, and the fact that the cover is no longer included, and has to be bought separately. I can understand why they made these changes, but I'd just as soon stick with my Kindle 1.

Labels: Kindle

Here's a story from the WSJ with some more details on the next version of the Kindle: "Amazon is unveiling a new version of its Kindle e-book reader, and possibly an exclusive agreement for a Stephen King work." Interesting.
I'm not too enthusiastic about the idea of exclusive content on the Kindle, or any other e-book reader. I don't mind the idea of a new book being released for the Kindle before it's published in physical form, though. That even kind of makes sense, since you can publish for the Kindle much faster than you can print actual books and ship them out to stores and all that. And maybe a publisher could use Kindle book sales as an indicator of how popular a book is going to be, and hence make judgements about the size of a print run.
This story doesn't have much info, or any photos, about the actual hardware. I've seen new photos elsewhere on the web though. I'm still not seeing anything in the new Kindle that'll make me want to toss my old one. Hopefully, we'll get full details later today.

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Labels: Kindle

According to a variety of sources (including the NYT), there will likely be a new Kindle model released on Feb. 9. I'm pretty happy with the current Kindle, but I'm curious to see what the new model looks like (assuming that's actually what Amazon is announcing on 2/9).

It doesn't look like they've got any really revolutionary advances in E-Ink technology ready, and that's the area where they could really make a difference in the hardware.

Labels: Kindle

I posted a couple of weeks back that I would likely pick up David Allen's new book, Making It All Work, whenever the Kindle version dropped to $9.99. Well, it just did, so I bought it today. I just just thinking that our new president could probably use a bit of organizational help from David Allen. He's got such an ambitious agenda, and in such a challenging environment, that I really think he should put a personal productivity guru of some sort on his staff. (Who knows, maybe he already has one.)

I'm not sure when I'll actually get around to reading this book, though. I'm in the middle of a Doctor Who novel right now, plus I just started reading 1776, and I have John Adams on the Kindle too. Plus a boatload of SF and fantasy novels, both dead-tree and Kindle format, waiting to be read.

Labels: books, GTD, Kindle

I finished reading Spirit House today, on my Kindle. I'm a little annoyed that there's only one other book in the Calvino series available in the US. The remaining books are available mail-order from Thailand, but that's kind of expensive. One of the good things about the Kindle is that it should make it relatively easy and risk-free to get a bunch of already-written books into "print" in the US. You don't have to worry about upfront printing costs, the risk of returns from brick and mortar retailers, or any of that noise. Just put them out there on Amazon, and see what happens.

Labels: books, Kindle

David Allen's new book just came out. I'll probably pick up the Kindle version at some point, though I think I'll wait and see if they drop the price on it. It's $14.27 right now; the hardcover is $17.13. I'm assuming the Kindle version will drop to the usual $9.99 eventually.

I still haven't finished reading Ready for Anything , actually, so I'm in no hurry to start the new book. Along similar lines, I'm almost done with the audio version of Stephen Covey's 7 Habits.

I don't know if all this book-reading is doing me any good, really, but I like to think it's helping.

Labels: GTD, Kindle

Here's an article from the NY Times on the Kindle, and other e-book readers, and the e-book market in general. The gist of it is basically that the market is picking up, and people, both readers and authors, are becoming more accepting of it. I'm still waiting for J K Rowling to decide that she's OK with e-books. I wouldn't mind re-reading the first few Harry Potter books at some point, but I had borrowed them from a friend when I first read them, and have since returned them. I could probably be talked into buying Kindle versions, though! I guess JKR just doesn't want my money.

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Labels: Kindle

Okay, another Kindle post. Sorry. I just read that Rand McNally is releasing a few road atlases for the Kindle. I don't know, I guess that could be useful, but really, the Kindle seems like a really bad platform for a book of maps. The screen is small and grey-scale. If you really want static maps, just buying a paper atlas is a much better idea. And if you want electronic maps, just use Google maps on your cell phone, iPod Touch, or whatever. Or get a GPS.

Labels: Kindle

These guys make some great covers for the Kindle. They're pretty expensive though. I guess I'll stick with the one that came with it.

It seems like I haven't been blogging about anything other than the Kindle lately. There's no particular reason for that. I just haven't had much else to say. I think I'm nearly done fighting the cold I caught a couple of weeks ago. I should, hopefully, be fine by Christmas.

Labels: Kindle

There are two new magazines available on the Kindle: Cash, a personal finance magazine, and The Escapist. I'm still hoping that they'll eventually add The Economist. As magazines go, it's perfect for the Kindle -- nearly all text. Very little would be lost in the translation.

I'm curious about "Cash". The general format itself is interesting -- it appears to be a Kindle-only compilation of repurposed content from other TMS sources. I wonder if we'll see more of this kind of thing on the Kindle.

Labels: Kindle

Random House has made a number of their Kindle titles free to download, until 2/28/09. There are three Charlie Huston novels on the list, and a few other ones that sound interesting. I actually haven't read any of Huston's novels yet, but I did enjoy his run on Moon Knight.

Meanwhile, I'm fighting a cold this week. It snuck up on me on Sunday afternoon. I'm assuming I picked it up while I was out Christmas shopping. Hopefully, it won't linger for too long. I want to be healthy for Christmas and New Year's!

Labels: books, Kindle

I just found out that PC Magazine is going to stop publishing their hard copy, and go "100% digital." I haven't picked up a copy of PC Mag in a while, but it's still sad to see it go. I had a subscription at one point a few years back, and it was one of the more useful magazines out there. Aside from continuing their web site, they will also continue to publish a digital version via Zinio. That's kind of disappointing, since I'm not a big fan of Zinio's reader. I'd really like to see them offer a Kindle version, but I haven't seen any indication that they might do that. Looking at the Kindle magazine list, there actually aren't any computer magazines in there at all. There are a bunch of computer-related blogs in the Kindle blog list, though. It is, of course, not hard to find tech news on the web, or on the Kindle, really, but it would be nice if even one general-audience computer magazine could survive in "dead tree" form.

Labels: Kindle, Windows

There was a good little article on ghost stories in Saturday's Wall Street Journal. Two of their recommendations -- Ghost Stories by M. R. James and The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, are available at manybooks.net in Kindle format. I think I'm going to read some ghost stories for Halloween!


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Labels: books, Kindle

It looks like someone has leaked some photos of the Kindle 2. I'm perfectly happy with my original Kindle, and, just from the photos, I don't think I'd necessarily want to trade it in for the new one. I have to admit I don't do much with the Kindle, aside from reading Newsweek and the NY Times. I've read one novel on it, and a handful of short stories. Since I joined Bookmooch, I've wound up with a fairly large backlog of "dead tree" books to read. I think I have about 20 novels stacked up right now.

Labels: Kindle

Interesting article about the relationship between our devices and our attention spans. The author quotes Jeff Bezos, who hopes the "Kindle and its successors may gradually and incrementally move us over years into a world with longer spans of attention." I guess we shouldn't expect a Twitter client to be built into the Kindle any time soon!

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Labels: books, Kindle

I bought The Last Lecture in Kindle format a few days ago. I'm almost done reading it. It's a pretty good read. Lots of short chapters, mostly random anecdotes from Randy Pausch's life. There's nothing in the book that's likely to change my life, I think, but just a lot of interesting little insights, and some fun stories.
This is also the first book I'm reading, in its entirety, on the Kindle. It's been a pretty smooth reading experience. Certainly no worse than reading an old-fashioned paper book, but not necessarily any better. Of course, there are some photos in the book, and they really don't look at all good on the Kindle, so that's a concern. In the future, I'll probably avoid buying any book for the Kindle if I know it's heavy with photos or other graphics.

Labels: books, Kindle

The BBC has a bunch of Doctor Who ebooks available for free download. So that's another three or four free books I've got loaded onto my Kindle now. I don't know if any of them are any good, but they didn't cost me anything, and they aren't taking up much disk space, so no big problem there, right?

Labels: books, Kindle, scifi

I'm still loading my Kindle up with free stuff. I haven't bought a single ebook from Amazon yet. I just re-discovered the 2007 Nebula page at Fictionwise, which lists a bunch of Nebula-nominated stories from last year that are available from them for free.
And I also just noticed that Fictionwise has a number of magazines available in Kindle-compatible formats, including Analog and a few other SF and mystery magazines. I've been somewhat disappointed in Amazon's selection of magazines for the Kindle; they've only got 11 magazines available, and none of them are primarily fiction magazines. I may decide to try out a couple of magazines from Fictionwise and see if they work well on the Kindle.

Labels: books, hardware, Kindle

Right after the Kindle was released, there was a lot of talk about the DRM/licensing model it used. The subject seems to have come up again this weekend, starting with a post on Gizmodo that got referenced on Slashdot and Boing Boing. If you look through the comments on all three of these sites, you'll see some well though out opinions, plus of course some less (perhaps) cogent ones.

I've loaded my Kindle up with a fair number of free (and legal) non-DRM'd ebooks from various sources. I do intend on buying some stuff from the Amazon store at some point, but just haven't gotten around to it yet. Yes, I do know that I won't really be *buying* these books, but rather just buying a license to read them on a particular device under specific conditions. I'm OK with that. I usually only read a given book once or twice, and I don't feel the need to keep a copy of every book I've ever read, so I really won't mind it if my Kindle ebook "library" disappears if I ever decide to just get rid of my Kindle. If I buy an ebook that's really great, and I really want to keep a copy around, I'll probably go out and buy a hard copy too.

One of the arguments that I see come up frequently is the idea that if DRM'd ebooks *completely* replace hard copy books, then various really good things about the current book economy will go away -- lending books to friends, buying cheap used books, borrowing books from the library and so on. I really don't think we need to worry about this happening any time in the near future. I think the ebook reader market is going to remain a niche market for quite a while. Even if the price comes down, it's just not a model that's going to appeal to most people. There are a lot of people who just don't read enough to warrant buying any kind of dedicated device for reading. Just picking up an occasional paperback at Border's, or the library, or the airport bookstore, is more than enough for them.

And I don't think that the iPhone, or smartphones in general, and going to be used as ebook readers by too many people. That's also an opinion I've seen tossed around a bit. I think the iPhone (or iPod Touch in my case) is great for browsing through the NY Times site and checking out a few articles, but I wouldn't want to try and read a novel on it.

So I guess that's my (more than) two cents on the Kindle DRM thing. I don't know if anyone will find this post particularly useful or interesting, but I just had to get all that off my chest.

Labels: books, hardware, Kindle

I got a Kindle today. I ordered it back in early February, so it took about a month for Amazon to get it out the door. It's pretty much what I expected. The screen is very readable, in any (reasonable) light. As many others have pointed out, the button layout makes it a little awkward to figure out a good way to hold the thing without pressing either the next page or previous page button. I think I'll get used to it though.

The built-in web browser is interesting, and might be somewhat useful. Gmail seems to be usable on it. Lotus Notes webmail is out of the question, though. Mobile-friendly sites like http://nytimesriver.com/ ought to be useable.

I haven't bought any books for it yet. For now, I've just got some free books on it that I downloaded from ManyBooks and Tor.

For the most part, I'm liking it. I have so many hard copy books sitting around that I won't be using it for most of my reading any time soon, but I'll start reading something on it soon, just to start using it. I'll likely blog more about it after I've played around with it some more.

Labels: books, hardware, Kindle

I just noticed a post by Tim O'Reilly on the Kindle over at Radar. He talks a bit about the possibility of getting O'Reilly books out on the Kindle. In one of the comments, something interesting is mentioned: The Kindle has no monospaced font! That's really a big problem, when you start getting into code samples in programming books. Oh well, yet another obstacle keeping me from the Holy Grail of tossing all my 1500-page programming books and replacing them with e-book equivalents.

Labels: books, Kindle

I've been thinking about the Kindle again. I still haven't quite decided to buy one, but I'm getting closer.

Here's a scenario that's got me thinking:
(It's kind of a long story, so bear with me.)
I bought the audiobook version of Brad Meltzer's "Zero Game" from iTunes awhile ago. I've been listening to it in the car, and enjoying it quite a bit. I hit a point, though, where the audio just cut out and skipped ahead about five chapters. I went back and forth with Apple about it, and eventually got a refund. (They tell me that they've now posted a corrected version, so if you're interested in the book, don't let this glitch stop you from buying it!)

While I was going back and forth with support, though, I really wanted to just continue reading the book. If I'd had a Kindle, I could have just bought it from Amazon, and picked up reading the missing parts the same day I hit the glitch.

I did wind up buying a used hardcover copy of the book from Amazon so I could read the missing part. Now, while that obviously took longer to get to me than the Kindle version would have, it was a bit cheaper, and I can (theoretically) resell it, or just give it away, when I'm done reading it.

However, I'm sitting here right now looking at the book, and thinking that I'm probably going to just toss it on the floor in a pile of other old books when I'm done with it. The used book system on Amazon is great for buyers, but they've driven down prices on used books so much that there's not much point trying to sell it after I'm done with it. And I don't know anybody who'd really be interested in reading it who I could hand it off to. And I know I'll never talk myself into just throwing it out.

I've got a whole bunch of books that fall into this category. Basically, books that I'm probably never going to want to re-read, and have almost no resale value, but I can't bring myself to throw them out.

In some ways, the economics of this seem almost perverse, but I think I might be willing to pay a little extra to buy a book that doesn't leave any physical footprint in my tiny little apartment. Something I can keep on a device, or my computer's hard drive, or wherever, for however long I want. It's annoying that the DRM scheme on any e-book reader (Sony or Amazon) will prevent me from loaning or giving away my old "books." And it's a little galling that the e-books generally cost more than a used copy in hardcover or paperback. But I'm looking at this apartment full of old books, and thinking that I could really reclaim a lot of space if I could just get rid of some of them!

Having said that, though, there are certainly still a lot of books I'd like to keep in hard copy form. Jasper Fforde's books, for instance, wouldn't work well on a Kindle, since he plays with fonts, footnotes, and other odd stuff that wouldn't translate well into the single-typeface Kindle. In fact, Fforde's concept of the "UltraWord" system, introduced in "Well of Lost Plots", is, in some ways, a parody of DRM'd e-book systems. One of the characteristics of UltraWord was that you could only read any given book three times, then it would just refuse to open.

I'm aware that buying DRM'd e-books right now, for any platform, will probably leave me with books that I won't be able to read again past, say, five or ten years, since whatever platform I buy now will probably be gone by then. I bought Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy in Microsoft Reader format several years back, and read them on my old Toshiba Pocket PC. While I still have those files around somewhere, I don't have the Pocket PC anymore. If I want to read those books again on the Kindle, I'd have to repurchase them. (And, hey, I see that I can get them for the Kindle, for $3.19 each. That's actually not a bad price. Cheaper than the average used copy, even.)

Labels: books, Kindle

I blogged about the Sony Reader a couple of months back. The Amazon Kindle is out now too. One of the things I didn't like about the Sony Reader was the lack of technical books. I did a little searching on Amazon, and they definitely seem to have a better supply of programming books available than Sony. The pricing on them isn't great though. For instance, ASP.NET 2.0 Unleashed is $36 on Amazon for the dead tree version, and $32 for the Kindle version. That book is almost 2000 pages, and weighs 6 pounds, so I can understand why the physical version costs so much, but I think they should really be able to deliver the electronic version at a significantly lower price. Leaving that aside for now, it's still pretty compelling to switch from having a big pile of 2000 page, 6 pound books to having a single device weighing less than one pound holding multiple books. And I still think the idea of a partnership with Safari would be great, but I guess that's too much to ask for at this point.

There have been some interesting reactions to the Kindle, from people like Scoble and Mossberg. One thing that concerns me is that both of those guys have pointed out some interface problems that make the device a little frustrating to use.

Cory Doctorow pointed out a few negatives on a post on BoingBoing, and talked about it a bit during an episode of TWiT from a few weeks back. His big problem is basically the DRM and TOS stuff. I don't necessarily mind DRM, if it's done well, and if I can trust that the company behind it will be supporting the system for a while. In other words, I don't have a big problem with iTunes DRM, but I don't really trust that anyone else's DRM is going to be around long enough to make it worth my while to invest any money in it. Of course, I'd rather just not have *any* DRM, but that just doesn't seem feasible right now. I know we're getting there on music, but it doesn't look like we're anywhere near there on books yet.

I really like the wireless purchase and delivery system on the Kindle. That seems much better than the Sony system. I think that if they can get some of the interface kinks ironed out in the next iteration of the hardware, bring down book prices a bit, and maybe bring the price of the device itself down, then I'll be ready to take the plunge and get one.

Labels: books, hardware, Kindle

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