Kindle Review – Kindle Fire Review, Kindle 4 Review

These features get my vote for the 10 best killer eReader features so far -

The Combination of Portability and Capacity

• You can have a library at home – but you can’t really carry it around.
• You can carry a book any where, perhaps even a few – However, you can’t really take them all.

Pretty much every eReader gives you the ability to combine capacity and portability into one package. The long battery life really helps too.

Kindle WhisperNet 

This was a big part of the Kindle’s success and it really changed the value proposition of the eReader -

1. Free Internet. 
2. Access to Wikipedia. 
3. Browsing books and buying them through the eReader, and getting them in 60 seconds. 

Nook eBook Lending. 

Not sure how Barnes & Noble pulled this off – However, it’s a huge feature as it brings back the sharing and social aspects of reading.

The question is -

1. Will it increase or decrease sales? By how much?

We’ll find out tomorrow how many times an eBook can be lent.

Gutenberg, Internet Archive, ManyBooks, Google - Free Public Domain Books 

Most of the credit ought to go to Gutenberg and the free sites for sharing out public domain books. However, Google took it to the next level by sharing out a ridiculous number of books. 

1. It helps create an instant free library. 
2. You get all the classics for free.
3. The non-profits like Gutenberg provide books in every format with no strings attached so everyone can get them. 

Kindle Read To Me

While some Publishers are holding back you have to admit this is a really cool feature and it does a lot of big things -

1. Increases the value proposition. 
2. Lets blind and low vision people access every Kindle Book that has TTS enabled. 
3. Lets you have your eReader read to you when your hands are not free.  

Interlude:

One of the great joys of competition is that different companies are all coming out with innovations and killer features that are combining to make eReaders better and better.

Take just these 3 moves in 2009 -

1. eBook Lending from Nook. 
2. Library Finder from Sony.
3. Text To Me from Kindle. 

Sooner or later these will morph from unique features to standard features (like lower book prices amongst ebooks are leading to the WalMart and Amazon $10 Hardcovers price war).

Sony Library Finder 

This feature is hampered by the fact that except for New York City libraries don’t really have a lot of ebooks.

However, it’s a very interesting feature that could become as important as public domain books.

Kindle Books’ $9.99 Price Point

This might be the most killer feature of all. It’s begun to change the whole industry now that WalMart, Amazon, and Target are reducing hardcovers prices to $9 and $10.

There will always be a segment of the market that is willing to pay a higher price for high end books (currently hardcovers). However, the price of ebooks means that segment is going to grow smaller and smaller.

Unlikely Partnerships

A Barnes & Noble device running on Android. Sony using a million free public domain books courtesy Google.

The lead that Amazon and the Kindle have built up are forcing companies to join together and innovate. They haven’t created something spectacular yet – However, it might be just around the corner.

Stanza and iPhone Reading Apps 

You can’t ignore 3 million readers on the iPhone – even if they probably don’t buy anywhere as many books as eReader owners do.

Stanza and the early iPhone reading apps forced Amazon to release Kindle for iPhone and buy Stanza. This did do two big things -

1. Bring the Kindle Store books to the iPhone.
2. Bring us WhisperSync which is a pretty impressive feature.  

The Move towards Common Formats

There are two aspects to this -

1. The push towards having open formats. 
2. Support for certain popular formats across all devices.

This hasn’t progressed as quickly as would be ideal – However, there’s finally a push towards ePub.

It’s also worth considering that even the eReaders that get criticized for being ‘closed’ are pretty open. Take the Kindle. You can read a lot of different formats, get a ton of public domain books, and books from other stores on it.  

What are the most anticipated killer eReader features?

Here are some of the features we can hope to see soon -

1. A unified format. 
2. Touch that does not affect readability. 
3. Color.
4. Low Prices – We are at the $259 price point for the main eReaders. That’s commendable given we were at $399 two years ago.
5. 3rd party Apps on eReaders. Txtr is the first company to open up its device and hopefully other companies follow suit.
6. Social Features – B&N’s Nook is promising these.
7. Lots of eBooks in languages other than English. 
8. A big jump in refresh speed that improves the reading experience.
9. Pixel Qi’s magic screen that will allow netbooks and laptops to do double duty as eReaders.

It’s been a pretty good rate of progress over the last 2 years, especially the last 6 or so months. Here’s to the next year being even better for reading and eReaders.

Filed under: eBook Reader Devices Tagged: | ereader features, ideal ereader