Kindle Review – Kindle 3 Review, iPad Review

It’s always amusing to hear people who will never, ever buy an eReader tell eReader companies what they should be designing.

It’s even more amusing when they threaten to not buy an eReader unless their requested changes are made.

When eReader haters threaten to not buy eReaders

A common theme since Day 1 of the rise of eReaders has been -

1. Person X (usually a tech blog journalist) hears about the Kindle.
2. He dreams up what eInk is, how an eReader handles, what it is useful for, etc. If we’re lucky he/she actually finds an eReader and plays with it for 15 minutes.
3. She/He writes an article saying how eReaders should change in a few ways (be multi-purpose, have color, feed his pet giraffe when he’s out of town).
4. The article always ends with a flourish – If Amazon/Sony/B&N don’t do this, then I will never buy an eReader.

Mr. Genius – You were never going to buy an eReader.

eReader companies could have designed Hello Kitty themed eReaders with 52″ plasma screens and opened them up wider than the grand canyon and you still wouldn’t buy them.

The cause of eReader hating is unknown – However, the rate of infection seems to be increasing and there are multiple types of eReader haters now loose in the wild.

Type 1: People who don’t read but want an eReader designed for them

These are usually people who read less than 2 books a year.

They would like an eReader designed for them that meets these specifications -

1. It’s great for entertainment. 
2. It bakes them a birthday cake – preferably one that doubles up as a Christmas Tree.
3. It makes phone calls and, if possible, video calls.
4. It teleports kittens and freighters. 
5. It plays movies.
6. It lets them load book covers and pretend they read.
7. It provides 1,000 ways to distract them from reading so they don’t have to.
8. It cleans the chimney

Take this description of their perfect eReader – If you could run a Device Fingerprint Check you’d apprehend the latest netbook computer hybrid with a wish genie.

Their threats are thankfully limited to all the money eReader companies are losing.

All the money lost by not catering to people who -

1. Want an eReader optimized for NOT reading. Anything other than reading. Everything apart from reading.
2. Want an eReader that they will not use for reading.
3. Won’t buy a lot of ebooks.
4. Probably won’t even buy a modified eReader that does multiple things since the eInk screen isn’t multi-purposey enough.

Type 2: People who want to win an argument or push an agenda

These are people who view eReaders as an opportunity to push their own beliefs and agendas -

1. Single purpose devices will lose out to multi-purpose devices.
2. People don’t read any more.
3. Reading isn’t cool. 
4. Information wants to be free.
5. Everything is meant to be open. 
6. DRM is evil – if there were no DRM everyone would pay out of the goodness of their hearts.
7. Authors should write for recognition and not money.
8. Authors should be paying people for reading their books.
9. eReaders should do more than just read.
10. eReaders should do everything except read.

Those are just some of the strange reasons people have for pushing a particular eReader design or feature.

These people again threaten to not buy an eReader.

They bring up intangible things like Good and Evil and doing the right thing -

Want to pay authors in smilies – smilies mean more than money.  

Sony won’t let me pay in smilies. Sony is Evil.  

That means going and downloading the book from a pirate site is justified.

It’s not stealing since there’s nothing physical. Here are two smilies – . Now we’re even.

Besides it’s not like you lost a sale – no one was going to read the book.

It’s totally me giving you recognition.  

Recognition and smilies – that’s too much.

Give half my smilies back – give me back the you can keep the . 

These are the worst non-customers because not only do they steal they also believe they’re some latter-day digital Robin Hood. After that they bad mouth you and run around the Internet harping about their lost rights.   

Type 3: People who want everything free

These people want all of the following -

1. eReaders for $100. 
2. $1 new releases. 
3. Free Library Books.
4. No DRM so they can share.
5. Used eBook market so they can sell their free and pirated and $1 eBooks for $5 each.

They threaten that if eReader companies don’t design all these features they’ll lose out -

1. On the $5 every $100 eReader would generate. 
2. On the undying gratitude authors would earn by sacrificing themselves.
3. On the opportunity for authors to starve for their art.
4. On the zero money stores would make from zero book purchases.
5. On the losses of revenue due to wireless services and customer service for $1 eBooks.
6. On the eBooks industry dying out.

It’s a little sad because they really believe that companies will regret losing out on the zero money they could have earned.

The common thread – None of these people are customers

The Free Tribe have one or more of these qualities -

1. An aversion to reading books.  
2. A strong aversion to reading in general.
3. An attention span of less than 15 seconds.
4. A gift for finding excuses to pirate things. 
5. An inability to pay for anything.  
6. An overwhelming desire to make everything open and free.

The Free People are not an eReader or eBook customer. eReader companies aren’t designing their product for the Free People.

It’ll probably be quite a shock to them to find out that eReaders are actually being designed for the 93% of eReader owners who are happy with their current eReader.

TeleRead talks about Authors/Publishers threatening Amazon will lose its goodwill

This post was inspired by this snippet from a post over at TeleRead about the never ending Amazon Macmillan blood fued -

If Amazon keeps this up much longer, it is going to exhaust much of the goodwill that authors and publishers have previously had toward it—

and after some of the other disputes publishers and author-advocacy groups have had with Amazon already (the pricing issue, the Kindle text-to-speech issue, the listing-used-books-with-new issue) there may not have been much of that left to begin with.

 So let me get this straight -

1. Authors and Publishers had goodwill towards Amazon. 
2. They lost some of that goodwill due to pricing, Kindle TTS, used books listed with new, etc. 
3. There may not be much goodwill left.
4. Amazon must do what Publishers say to preserve this tiny amount of goodwill.

We’re in the middle of an all-out war – there’s no place for goodwill

Authors and Publishers are missing a few minor details as they warn Amazon it will lose their goodwill -

1. Publishers have been stalling eBooks since Day 1.
2. Publishers have delayed the growth of eReaders by not adding enough titles and by limiting eReader features like text to speech.
3. Publishers are trying to kill Amazon’s lead by banding with Apple.
4. Publishers are trying to kill eBooks by raising prices and adding ebook delays for $9.99 ebooks.
5. Publishers and Authors are trying to paint Amazon and eReaders as evil in the court of public opinion.

It’s ludicrous to say that Amazon should worry about the goodwill of Publishers hellbent on killing eReaders and eBooks.

As ludicrous as taking eReader design advice from people who hate eReaders and reading.