Kindle Review – Kindle 2 Review, Books

The really big news is Google starting open war with Amazon by starting to sell ebooks, not to mention telling publishers they can sell ebooks for the same price as hardcover books.

May was probably the single most eventful month in terms of ebooks and Kindle news ever. A lot of significant events -

In May the Kindle and we saw:

1. Kindle DX anounced. People buying it despite no known kindle dx ship date (July 6th perhaps). 
2. We find out that Kindle editions are 35% of sales for books that have a Kindle edition available.
3. Pixel Qi introduce a screen that Time magazine calls the future of ereading. Its hard to disagree.
4. Kindle Publishing for Blogs started.  
5. Apple MediaPad rumors intensify. Early 2010 date proposed by Apple expert (whatever that means).
6. KindleAir - We find out a developer is working on Kindle for your PC (and Amazon is almost certainly not involved).
7. Plastic Logic Demo finally revealed. Looks great except for page turns slower than a lazy snail.
8. We find out Sprint probably makes $2 per Kindle user, Amazon probably pays 12 cents per MB transferred.
9. Kindle for iPhone app gets a new version.
10. RandomHouse turn off TTS for 40 of their books.
11. Kindle enter publishing, starts Amazon Encore with Cayla Kluver and her book Legacy as the first offering.
12. We find out Kindle owners probably skew to an older demographic, news outlets keep claiming its a bad thing.
13. Scribd start selling ebooks and giving Publishers 80%.
14. Publishers continue their assault on the $9.99 ebook price. Kindle owners fight back by overwhelmingly choosing to buy $9.99 or cheaper books.
15. Sony says they will have a larger Sony Reader out by end of the year. And that they will abstain from naming it Sony DX or PRS900, instead going with Bing.

Some other interesting kindle threads -

1. New York Magazine point out that New York Times is being rather catty about the Kindle (blaming it for mispronouncing Obama, then for book piracy).  
2. An interview with Lawrence Lessig (Professor of Law at Stanford) on ereaders covers some good points including this one -
   

   So we’ve got to find a way to make books relevant, so the Kindle makes it much easier to get access to this content. There’s actually a very interesting text reading facility built into the books so that you can listen to your book as you’re driving to work or as you’re riding on the train and so that’s making that form of expression accessible in the digital age, and I think that’s an important part of keeping it relevant.

   If we didn’t do that, then people would read fewer books, they would spend more time reading blogs or spend more time doing Twitter and things like that.

3. Tina Brown sports a popped collar (instantly killing the style for rap stars and college kids alike) and bashes $9.99 digital books.
4. Wired write about the color, touchscreen, kitchen safe, digital recipe reader, the Demy (retails at $300). If Amazon would allow 3rd party apps you could get an ERecipe app for $5 instead.
   

   Demy Digital Recipe Reader

5. Colorware will color your Kindle in whatever design you like for $199. They let you color the buttons, front, back, keys, cursor, and every other element of the kindle.