Kindle Review – Kindle Fire Review, Kindle 4 Review

People in love with books seem to be worrying about the wrong thing.

Their focus is all about how technology is polluting books and how we’re losing the touch and smell and authenticity of books.

• Tim Adams at the Guardian writes about how ebooks might spell the end of great writing.
• Sherman Alexie goes on the Colbert Show and complains about ebooks and piracy.

Authors and book-lovers are doing their best to pretend that there has been no decline in reading.

Books and Reading were in decline before the Kindle and eReaders 

It doesn’t take too much effort to consider the notion that perhaps the failure of book publishers to leverage technology and improve the reading experience are the real reasons reading was in decline - long before the cursed eReaders appeared.

There were a lot of factors coming together -

1. Completely new industries, such as video games, sprang up and gained popularity.
2. Numerous other new forms of entertainment started cutting into free time – Internet-based diversions perhaps the biggest culprit.
3. Music and Movies went through several iterations of technology and became more compelling – consider the convenience of the iPod.
4. Television added High Definition, TiVo and more.

All this time Publishers spurned technology in favor of control. They went so far as to blame it – especially digital piracy – for their own inefficiencies.

It wasn’t a bad move if you consider that Publishers are primarily interested in the interests of Publishers -

1. Technology is an easy scapegoat to blame for your own lack of evolution.  
2. Some Publishers and Authors don’t really understand technology. 
3. Technology threatened to break down the barriers to Publishing.
4. A true evolution would eventually mean that the gatekeepers of Publishing lose all their power.

Publishers are optimized in every way for a world that existed many decades ago.

A world in which no one every questioned (or for that matter even thought about) Publishers’ total control  and the suitability of the physical book.

However,

Books must evolve to survive

While the physical printed book has numerous advantages – the character, the uniqueness, the signalling potential, the portability, the feel – it cannot go on forever.

• We have had the physical carrier of the book evolve – scrolls gave way to codices and they gave way to physical books.
• Eventually we are going to need a new physical carrier that revitalizes reading and books.

 There are several dimensions along which the physical book can be evolved -

1. Lower prices. 
2. Cutting distribution costs. 
3. Making them easier to use. 
4. Making them easier to search.
5. Portability.

When we develop a new carrier for books we will lose some benefits of the physical shell that we have bonded so thoroughly with. However, no one is asking us to make the loser’s choice between digital books and physical books. Physical books will always have their special charm – we can and should have both physical and digital books.

The real issue is not about the survival of the ‘physical shell’ we are used to using for our books – The real issue is the survival of the core book itself.

It’s time to start using all the wonderful technology we’ve invented in the last few hundred years and improve on the physical carrier we use for books.

Technology is a tool, not an enemy

It’s strange to hold up Gutenberg’s Press as a great invention and, at the same time, not consider that, in a more evolved form, the current eReader could be just as important an invention.

1. It can read a book to you – and eventually the voice will not be robotic.
2. It can hold hundreds of books.
3. We’ll figure out a way to give eReaders character.
4. We’ll even figure out a way to impress whoever catches our fancy with the exquisiteness of our literary tastes. 
5. Lower prices mean more people have access.
6. It lets anyone publish – readers get to decide what excellence is.  

A technologically advanced eReader goes along well with the physical book. Think of it as a partnership and not a contest.

eReader + Books Vs All Other Entertainment

The convenience and low prices and cool technology and innovative features of other forms of entertainment are stealing the young impressionable minds that we need to get into books.

The choice for Publishers and eReader haters is pretty clear.

Option 1 is – Refuse to Evolve and die out as everyone else evolves.

Stick to expensive physical books, inefficient manufacturing and distribution.

Stick to a gatekeeper model where the elite decide who reads what.

Stick to what people stuck in the past recommend - even though they secretly know it’ll be the death of them.

Option 2 is – Build an eReader that leverages the latest technology and becomes an ally for Physical books.

iPod with 10,000 songs? Here’s a Kindle with 1,500 books.

Movie with Surround Sound? My Book reads to me or I can use background music.

Video Games that let you pick your story? Gamebooks and Video Books on eReaders and on the iPhone.

The masterstroke – combine that with the Physical Book you can show off in your living room or carry with you to the coffee shop.

With Option 2 you still have your physical books – they aren’t going anywhere.

It’s about the Survival of Books

Publishers need to look at the difference between newspapers and books.

1. The Kindle has ignited a ton of interest in books.
2. Kindle owners buy a lot more books than they used to and read more.
3. eReaders are evolving quickly and in 2010 we will have even more innovations.

In the meantime newspapers are dying because they tried to fight the Internet and TV all by themselves – without leveraging technology.

The very eReader that authors want to burn at the stake is what lets us hope that books have a future.

Physical books by themselves weren’t getting the job done and they can’t.

Their physical beauty and all the years of association, which makes them seem more important than the words of magic inside them, can’t hide the truth -

1. It can’t hide that large parts of the price of physical books was lost to inefficiencies.  
2. It can’t hide that a few groups of people decided what books the world got to read.
3. It can’t hide that every other form of entertainment is evolving and that experiencing these forms entertainment is becoming easier and more convenient than walking to a bookstore.  

Most of all it can’t hide the fact that the quality of writing has little to do with the tools you use and reading has little to do with what sort of room you do it in or whether it is a scroll or a slate.

We should worry about books and reading, and not the physical shell

There are three key aspects to a book -

1. The clarity and beauty of the thoughts and ideas of the author and his skill in writing them.
2. The ease with which this book can be spread amongst readers, and the ease and convenience with which they can read it. 
3. The openness of the reader and his/her ability to appreciate what the words hold.

Everything else is just a shell – a carrier.

In our love of the physical shell we should not get so carried away that we let the core, the book, die out.

If you really love books your worries are not about how some smell, that you mistakenly think is the real book, is going to be lost forever.

It’s much simpler – How do we compete? How do we encourage and grow a love of books in an ever evolving world?

Filed under: books Tagged: | future of books