Kindle Review – Kindle Fire Review, Kindle 4 Review

There are a few different things that inspired this post -

1. At Hacker News someone points to an article asking – Do you really value customers or just want their money?
2. Penguin’s random attempts at calling their apps books.
3. The ‘new eReader a day’ trend that we are seeing.
4. Various attempts by Publishers to get the Books and eBooks market to evolve in a direction that suits them.

All of it brings up a fundamental question.

Are people who love to read books the heart of Books and Reading?

Obviously.

They pay for books, they read books and they add reviews and recommend books to friends - What apart from readers could be the foundation for Books and Publishing? 

If you have another answer please do share.

Why do Publishers behave as if readers don’t matter?

Given that readers are the only people paying for books you’d think Publishers and Authors would all focus on making customers happy – getting them the best quality books at the lowest prices, innovating and improving things, cutting costs and being more efficient.

Yet, we have managed to get stuck in a world where competition increases eBook prices, success of eBooks leads to Publishers delaying them, and the prevalent attitude is ‘readers should do what’s best for our bottom line, not what’s in their best interest’.

We aren’t even talking about publishers not caring about readers - Publishers are actually hurting readers and making things worse for them.

Why do companies want to tell readers how to behave?

eReader companies are coming in with their own angle and it’s heavily skewed by what’s best for them.

Do you like to read?
Why not buy our device that you could play games on, and do 50 different things on.

Can you read on it?
Of course, but that’s not the important thing – you can play games and watch videos.

There are very few companies that are focused on people who love to read. It’s the strangest thing ever – let’s go into the reading device market with a device that doesn’t specialize in reading.

If a company did this in another field they would be laughed at – However, reading isn’t cool or fashionable enough so it’s OK for companies to market devices that are terrible for reading to readers.

Publishers and some eReader companies just want readers’ money

The behavior of most Publishers and most eReader companies hints at a few things -

1. They don’t really understand readers. It’s not that hard to figure out what people who love to read books would want – Yet very few companies are doing this.
2. They don’t really care about readers. There are just a handful of companies pushing for changes that are good for readers. 
3. They just want readers’ money. View their actions as the actions of a company who think readers are dumb cattle and it all makes sense.

Let’s review the ‘not caring for readers’ part.

Most Publishers and eReader companies don’t care about readers

Publishers cry and moan about the sustainability of books and how it costs money to create quality books. They paint themselves as heroes sacrificing everything for the future of books. Yet not a single mention of readers.

Where are the concerns about readers’ costs and budgets? Has there been anything at all done to make things better for readers?

In the last 2 years can’t recall a single Publisher saying that they ought to make things more affordable for readers or that they should leverage technology to improve quality of books.

It’s hard to think about your customers and what’s best for them when you don’t really care about them and just view them as walking ATMs.

eReader companies have much the same attitude – well, most of them do. There aren’t really that many companies saying -

How do we get customers the best books for the money?
How do we make sure readers get the best use of their time?
How do we keep readers free of distractions?

Instead they would like to take readers from doing good things (reading books, getting smarter) to wasting time (how about some YouTube (to make you stupid)?).

Putting money above readers makes Readers angry and wary

A little bit of digging shows that readers don’t take very kindly to being mistreated -

1. There are various boycotts - a boycott of books above $9.99, boycotts of Publishers who are delaying books, and so forth. 
2. Users put up negative reviews for Publishers and Authors that don’t treat them well. 
3. Lots of readers turn to piracy or buy used books.  

There are very few businesses where companies are trying their level best to lose the trust of their customers and make their customers hate them. Unfortunately, Publishing is one of them.

Readers will always side with Companies and Publishers that prioritize readers’ best interests

This might seem like an alien concept to Publishers – Would readers really prefer a company that treats them well?

Well, Readers are generally very smart people. They haven’t been brainwashed as much as people who watch 5 hours of TV a day. Their minds aren’t trained to be caged rats running after an imaginary goal like people who play virtual games. What that means is they can make the rather prodigious leap that a company that is on their side is a company to be supported and encouraged and a company that tries to exploit them is a company to be wary of.

80-90% of Publishers and Companies are trying to exploit users – consciously or unconsciously dumb users down and make them do things that are bad for users (or not optimal). However, there are 10-20% of companies and some smaller Publishers who are happy to create win/win situations.

Here’s a good example -

• Publishers want to support their existing infrastructure and their way of living so they price eBooks at $20. 
• Small Publishers want to get lots of sales and also offer a good deal to readers so they sell their books for $7 each. 
• Indie Authors want their books to be read so they sell their book for $1 to $3 in the Kindle Store.

That presents a very interesting choice to readers.

We are still at the early stages of the transformation so we don’t see the full impact of this choice. It does exist and with time it’ll destroy publishers and authors who are greedy and/or selfish.

We are in a world with infinite choice and the smartest authors and companies are aligning themselves with readers. We’ve left behind a world of publishing that was ruled by gatekeepers and oligarchs – the gatekeepers and oligarchs don’t realize it yet and that’s probably a good thing for readers.

Filed under: publishing Tagged: | concern for readers, lack thereof