Kindle Review – Kindle 3 Review, iPad Review

Tim Carmody at SnarkMarket has a good post on why he thinks books on the iPad might work. He thinks that most people will buy the WiFi model of the iPad and since they won’t have the Internet all the time and don’t have enough room for a ton of movies they’ll end up trying out other things i.e. reading books.

Here are the exact words -

That’s what’s going to hap­pen to books on the iPad. For every user who does a bunch of read­ing on their iPad, you’re going to get a dozen who are going to buy books based on the “what-the-heck” fac­tor. It’ll be bet­ter than buy­ing a book in an air­port, or at a shop­ping mall. The store will be right there.

I bet that the rel­a­tive weak­ness of the entry-level devices, the low mem­ory and lack of 3G inter­net, will all actu­ally drive iPad own­ers towards read­ing.

It’s not a bad hypothesis.

The path of least resistance makes reading on the iPad a good choice

There are a lot of choices when WiFi is available -

1. The Internet. 
2. Email and Facebook. 
3. Games.
4. YouTube.
5. Movies (although not very practical as downloads will take a long time). 
6. Music.
7. Books.

When WiFi is not available 1, 2, 4, and 5 are instantly ruled out. That means that when iPad owners are commuting etc. they’ll choose between music, games, and books. Add in text to speech support in the iBooks app and reading books and listening to books certainly become very appealing options.

You have the added convenience of -

1. Having reading apps from Amazon, B&N, Kobo, and other companies with their stores accessible through the Safari browser.
2. Being able to buy a book the minute someone recommends it to you or you read about it (WiFi is obviously needed).
3. Getting the book in 60 seconds.

It’s quite amusing to think that one of the easiest things to get to on the do-everything iPad will be plain old reading.

There’s actually something more powerful than convenience that will lead users to read on the iPad.

Books are the closest to pure story telling

All the talk of evolution of books and the future of books misses a few key points -

1. The only thing that’s evolving is the physical shell in which books are carried and how books are stored, transported, sold, and read.
2. Books don’t need to evolve. 
3. Books are the closest to pure storytelling and the aim is to let the user disappear in the story. It’s not to add anything – it’s to take away everything except the story – even the carrier (the physical shell) should disappear in the users’ hands.

That’s why the physical book and the Kindle have both been successes (the former obviously a much bigger success than the latter) – they disappear in the user’s hand and let the user get completely immersed in the story.

Movies and Video Books and Games can’t replace books because they have to get both the story and the environment right

Consider the amount of things these forms of storytelling have to get right in addition to having a great story -

1. Movies have to have good acting, good directing, correct plot pacing, the right environments, the appropriate music, and a lot more.  
2. Video Games have to do even more than movies – things like graphics quality, how lifelike the characters are, etc. Perhaps the biggest difference is that video games often let users write their own story which in a sense makes them a completely different thing from books and movies.
3. Video Books have to have videos that get everything right, they have to flawlessly blend together the flow of text and video, and they’ve chosen the almost impossible task of integrating social media into books.  

It’s hard enough to tell a great story that draws in users and delights them. Throwing in all these additional things just makes it harder.

The iPad gives a lot of users the option to experience pure storytelling

Let’s set aside the dedicated readers who have bought Kindles and Sony Readers.

Let’s also set aside dedicated readers who choose the iPad.

We’re still left with two important groups of people -

1. People who like books and reading and just haven’t gotten around to reading as much as they like. Let’s call them the semi-serious readers. They can’t make the time to read books or they can’t put in the effort to go to the book store or they want to read a book their friend recommends but by the next time they’re at the Mall they’ve forgotten.
2. People who will read the book for their favorite movie or their favorite author or will read once in a while. Let’s call them casual readers. These people will almost certainly not make the effort to seek out a bookstore – However, if a friend lends them a book they’re interested in they’ll read it. 

When people from these groups have access to an iPad (we’re assuming they don’t go out and buy an eReader) they suddenly get the option of 60 second book downloads and are able to read a book whenever and wherever they want. It gets them to read books.

The first time they read a book – either it brings back fond memories of reading or it introduces them to the purity of a medium that cares about nothing except the story. All the positive endorphins kick in.

Reading on the iPad literally becomes a gateway drug to reading.

iPad and iPad reading apps as a gateway drug to dedicated eReaders

While there will be some portion, perhaps even a majority, of these two groups (semi-serious readers and casual readers) that will stick with reading once in a while on the iPad (and other multi-purpose devices) there will be a significant portion that will fall in love with books and become avid readers.

These people will usually move to a dedicated reading device.

This might sound a bit ludicrous – the iPad increasing Kindle and Nook sales instead of killing them. However, it’s a logical outcome. The iPad will encourage more reading and a non-trivial number of users will get into reading enough to buy Kindles.  

Back to storytelling – Why it’s crucial for a device/medium to take a backseat to the story

With a book the author is letting the reader create the world of the book in their own minds (in a way that makes sense to them) and then letting them experience a story. That’s why books from thousands of years ago still make sense to us. Stories are timeless.

A lot of the frills and wrapping around the core story that we see with newer mediums aren’t enriching the story – they’re trapping it into the medium and into the time and era. They are technological marvels and marvels of the craft of the medium. They’re not marvels of storytelling.

Let’s say 100 years down the line you experience two stories in their respective mediums -

1. Watch the movie Avatar - Its graphics will no longer be as impressive. In fact the graphics will probably get in the way of getting to the story.
2. Read War of the Worlds – The story imposes few constraints on us. Unless we’ve colonized Mars it’ll have all its beauty untouched.

When you consider a book it’s telling a story or sharing an insight or spreading an idea. Everything other than the story/insight/idea is irrelevant. The best feature of the physical book was that it recognized that and it disappeared and let the story take center stage.

Whatever new shell or device becomes the future carrier of books it’s going to be one that disappears and lets the story soak up all the attention and glory.