Have talked in the past about the potential of Kindle for kids, especially in terms of helping them read more and develop a love for reading.
However, Amazon haven’t really done anything to promote the Kindle for children - instead choosing to focus on Kindle DX and college students.
Well, Amazon might have to move soon or risk losing the market for a children’s kindle to Nintendo.
Nintendo brings ebooks for kids to the Nintendo DS
Nintendo is jumping into the children’s ebooks market with something called Flips that work with the Nintendo DS.
Telegraph UK has the scoop -
- Flips can be read by ‘flipping’ through pages.
- There are sound effects and kids can spot feathers and flowers hidden in the pages to unlock games.
- A Flip is a collection of 6 to 8 books.
- Each Flip costs 25 pounds.
- Video Game company Electronics Arts is developing these.
- Enid Blyton’s Magic Faraway Tree, Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl, Cathy Cassidy, and Too Ghoul for School are the first Flips.
- Release Date is Friday, Dec 4th.
Here’s a video –
Flips do seem like a fantastic idea. The video continues the trend of eReader and eBook videos where we get to see a lot of the whole wide world and not enough of the device itself.
There’s another video where the concept of sharing between Nintendo DSes is explored – kids can ping a chapter of their flip to a friend.
Which brings up a related question -
Is the future of book sharing chapter sharing?
The concept of beaming over a chapter of a book you’re reading to a friend is a good one.
Let’s be honest here - None of the two extremes work i.e.
- You can’t have absolutely free sharing and also lower prices.
- You can’t have zero sharing as it hurts both sharing and the spread of books.
There are two compromises -
- Allow sharing of the first few chapters of a book from eReader to eReader.
- Allow one-time lending like the Nook has.
The latter will obviously be more popular. However, the former also manages to capture the sharing and recommendation aspects of physical book sharing.
eReaders in general will have to do something to counter the Nook’s LendMe feature and it’ll be interesting to see what sharing related features they introduce.
Coming back to the topic of kids and reading – Nintendo aren’t the only company recognizing that eReaders and eBooks for children are going to be big.
Scroll Motion adds interactive kids’ ebooks for iPhone
BNet and Publishers Weekly report on Scroll Motion’s Iceberg Reader Kids format -
“This is a fully interactive way of engaging a book filled with activities like image exploration, DIY audio book recording, and a whole new set of interactive controls for moving through a book that are built with fun in mind,”
Lots of interesting details -
- Iceberg Reader Kids format has enhancements like animations, audio content, and interactive tools.
- There’s an audio recording feature that lets Parents record themselves reading out a book.
- Competitors are supposedly working on similar ‘recordable audio’ features.
- Some books will feature songs and music.
- 30 titles will be released.
- Bookmark feature.
- Panning and zooming into illustrations.
- One of the titles is Curious George.
- Price between $4 and $15.
- Plans to move beyond iPhone in the future.
As BNet point out – this is yet another example of the evolution of books and how books are finally incorporating technology and catching up.
When will Amazon create a Kindle for Children?
Amazon has been ignoring the Kindle for Kids market – However, these initiatives by Nintendo and Scroll Motion show others are moving in on the opportunity.
There are a few key reasons Amazon need to make a move soon -
- If children adopt an eReader in droves it will be hard to beat.
- Life time customers – potentially.
- Parents will be more than willing to buy eReaders for their children.
- If it’s something that can be used for books and textbooks it increases the chances of success much more.
Amazon have perhaps 6-12 months to release a Kindle for children. After that, it’ll probably be too late.
Filed under: kindle Tagged: | kindle children books, kindle kids
Thank you for addressing this subject.
Being able to read is so important. It opens the reader to new worlds on so many levels.
We are a family of readers and books are a large part of my shopping list when buying gifts for my children and grandchildren, for all occasions. As a family, we buy paper textbooks, fiction, nonfiction, cookbooks, comics, manuals, and e-books.
My oldest grandson (10 1/2-years old) was born with 2 chromosomes damaged. He will never be able to drive a car, marry, or live alone. He is speech delayed.
He’s learning challenged and has problems with his sight, but he is in public school and is learning to spell, read and write. He gets straight A’s in school. And is presented a citizenship award each term at school, because he is so well-mannered, friendly and helpful.
He loves all superheroes, Legos, The Three Stooges, and his sister, and his new baby brother. (They are normal.)
The speech therapists and his teachers have used computers (since he was 4-years old) as a means of helping him to communicate and learn.
He has a speech enabler in the form of a small laptop adapted for text to speech. Right now they only use it at school.
It’s all working ! He can surf the Net and he types whatever he wants to search for like a pro. He has a computer in his room. He’s learning to go to sites that let you download coloring pages and he has learned to use a printer. He can use a VCR and DVD player by himself. I think an e-reader that has more options and features than the Kindle would be ideal for him.
My Kindle 1 is now a year old. It was a gift from my husband last Christmas. He bought it a week before it became unavailable.
I think he was hoping to save money on the cost of my reading habit. I don’t watch TV, I read a lot of books of all genres.
There are a lot of things I would change and improve on the KIndle, but I do love reading books on it. Having a library available at anytime, in my purse or on a table in my home, is fabulous.
We have 5 grandchildren and the three older kids are beginner readers, so the first thing I did was to purchase children’s e-books from Amazon for my Kindle. Early this year, 2009, some of our favorite authors weren’t available and some had only a few of their books available in e-book form. As the year has moved on, more have been available for purchase.
We were disappointed in the small illustrations. We knew they would be in B&W, but some images were so small they might as well not have been there.
Then, Amazon did an improvement update for Kindle 1 and the pictures became a bit larger. The adjustable text is a plus, too. Still it was not the ideal way to read a child’s book. We stuck with paper books.
Now, our favorite way to read the children’s e-books we’ve purchased, is on my laptop, with the Kindle for PC application. We love it ! The kids can read books in the car, too. And, they are all in my laptop. (We used to have a pile of books on the back seat while we traveled and we stored them in a big tote to move them from place to place.)
My grandchildren can sit with the laptop in their laps and read the stories with the beautiful full-size, full-color illustrations shown so clearly on the screen. We have downloaded old children’s books from Mobilereads and the illustrations are showing very clearly through the Kindle for PC App.
My biggest wish for the Kindle is for folders, and other ways of separating book genres. Also, a way of keeping the children’s books separate from my adult books. The way they are all lumped together is awful. Even if I delete the adult reading material from the home page, there is still the archive right there for the kids to see and get into.
I am sorry this is so long.
Thank you for all the information on e-readers that you share here.
I read your blog everyday.
Thank you so much for your comment. Makes my day to know you like the blog.
Thanks for mentioning Iceberg Kids in your article. I just wanted to let you know that you can now download Iceberg Kids Books from the Apple App Store.
Sincerely,
Josh
Here are some books you can download on iTunes.
Merry Christmas Curious George
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/merry-christmas-curious-george/id340564742?mt=8
Curious George and the Birthday Surprise
The I Love You Book
The Feel Good Book
Itunes Keyword: Iceberg Kids