In the past decade or so, there had been many failed attempts at making our reading become smoother and faster. That’s until online book retailer Amazon came along and again made the difference in enhancing the reading experience, with a reading device called the Kindle 2 electronic book reader. In deft fashion, its extraordinary features for reading are complemented by its novel way of acquiring the very content. The Kindle eBook Reader is engineered to download blogs, books, newspapers, and magazines. Periodicals are automatically sent to the device. Technology has afforded us with a very practical alternative to holding a book, magazine or other reading material and turning from one page to another. The Amazon Kindle is indeed powerful and is only surpassed by its successor the Kindle 2. Unlike other funky devices, the Kindle does not require a personal computer to download its media. Furthermore, syncing is smart and automatic. This electronic book reader is equipped with internet capability through 3G technology on which the Amazon Whispernet service is rendered. This feature comes with the purchase of the reader so users don’t have to concern themselves with the wireless service plan, contract, or bills thereafter if you Buy eBook Reader Kindle 2. Whispernet is Kindle’s dedicated wireless network. It carries the delivery system of its e-books and other reading materials. The service is practically instant. Within a minute of placing order, users can be reading away. The first few pages of the books are also available for sampling before deciding to buy. This wireless feature is currently not available outside the country but it shouldn’t be for long as the Kindle is meant for traveling. Appearance-wise, this portable reader is as impressive as its capabilities. The crisp black-and-white screen could easily be mistaken for some fine-grade printed paper. The high-tech virtual ink is designed to be just like real ink-on-paper in terms of appearance and readability so much so that there is no backlighting either. Therefore, it would not be difficult to read in bright sunlight and the screen never heats up so you don’t have to limit how long you should be reading on that account. Furthermore, Whispernet makes use of Amazon’s optimized technology plus Sprint’s national high-speed (EVDO) data network for users to wirelessly search, download, synch and read content. The maiden Kindle Amazon eBook Reader has been further enhanced into the Kindle 2. By seriously considering user feedback on the original Kindle, Amazon is gratefully able to come up with an even more impressive wireless reading device for its readers now.
So the pressure finally got to Amazon and the Kindle 2 ebook reader price has under gone a reduction. This was no great surprise, as once the manufacturing price had been leaked there was no place for Amazon to hide and with a reputation build on offering value for money, low margins and customer service the outcome was inevitable. What was a surprise is the size of the price cut. Couple this recent positive move by Kindle, which can only result in other manufacturers cutting the price of their models, with the ever expanding choice of ebook readers, and you have to admit there has never been a better time to buy an ebook reader.
The big question then is, and one that Kindle would like the answer to, will their Revolutionary Wireless Reading Device price cut be enough to get you to log into the Kindle shop, part with $299 and buy an ebook reader? Well the price cut has taken this particular digital book reader below the $300 mark, that’s a full $60 below it’s launch price just six month ago, but only time will tell if this is enough to draw those fence sitters into the electronic book reader market. Here’s my thoughts on it.
You have to admit, when people do buy an ebook reader it is not because there is a massive need to, it is because they want to and when you want something price does not tend to enter into the purchasing decision. This is something that not only Amazon but the majority of consumer electronics manufacturers play on, and take advantage of…desire. And for me, here lies the problem for Amazon, and for that matter every company who want you to buy their ebook reader.
For many potential buyers, those who are looking, fancying but not diving in, $300 is still a very hard purchase decision. Yes they read, but to make that change and switch to digital book readers will need something more than an ebook reader price cut of fifty bucks. It is going to be very interesting to see how the other manufacturers react to this move. They will feel the need to maintain margins but still need people to buy their ebook readers. This could well result in an ebook reader price reduction, by one of Amazon’s competitors, that will really bring electronic book readers into the bracket of an affordable gadget, bringing it into the price range of the majority of book readers.
The coming months, the run up to the busy Christmas sales period, are going to be interesting, you can put your house on there being further ebook reader price reductions, hold onto your money for a little longer, wait for the right moment to buy an ebook reader but be aware that last Christmas Amazon sold out of their Kindle 1 model. So don’t wait too long to buy an ebook reader or some one might be left disappointed this Christmas day.
Jeff Bezos changed the way people choose and buy books when he started Amazon. For many authors, Amazon has been a lifeline, breathing new life into books that had long since stopped being stocked by most bookshops. Amazon’s clever reader reviews, recommendations and “people who bought this also bought” feature have pulled dusty, forgotten books from the back of the store and stuck them in the front window again.
Now Bezos and the Amazon team are taking their revolution one step further. On November 16, 2007, they finally launched their much-anticipated electronic-book reader, the Kindle.
This new device is intended to make reading a book as easy and pleasurable on a portable screen as it is on paper. The big advantages the device has are that it can store more than 200 books, it can easily be updated with new books and it is light and portable. Most books, including new best sellers, cost $9.99. Some classics can be downloaded for as little as $1.99. Subscriptions to newspapers, magazines and blogs can cost 99 cents each or up to $14 a month.
Will the Kindle Succeed?
Content is going digital, of that we can be sure. Books, newspapers, radio, TV, magazines, courses and videos are all migrating to the Web. Many content producers are fighting the move, because making money online is seen as being far more problematic than in the “real” world, but user behavior is forcing the shift. Every bit of research undertaken on user habits clearly shows a reduction in the use of traditional media and an increase in the use of the Internet. In one survey of the “born digital” generation (that’s 12- to 18-year-olds), 87% said they consider the Web to be their primary source of information. These are the customers of tomorrow.
Does it follow that if content is going digital, then a product such as the Kindle, which makes this content portable, will likely be a great success?
My feeling is that portable reading devices will eventually become the norm, but it certainly won’t happen overnight, for several reasons. First and foremost, there is fundamentally nothing wrong with the paper book. People like books. They are used to them. Books don’t crash. They can be shared. I think the baby boomer generation will take a lot of convincing to move to electronic books. The advantages are negligible for the average casual reader.
Second is the cost. The Kindle is being launched at $399, plus $9.99 for each book. That is a lot of paperbacks for little advantage. In addition, Amazon has decided to charge for a lot of information that is free on the Web, such as newspapers and blogs. Had they provided this information for free and just charged for books, they might have attracted the Web generation. As it is, early adopters will download the blogs and newspapers onto their smartphones and stick with paper books.
“So as a Content Creator, Should I Ignore the Kindle?”
No! While I don’t think there is anything that you need to do immediately, you should proactively monitor how Kindle and similar products do. Portable reading devices will come of age and be an important means of distributing content. In the meantime, I can see several trends that could encourage their uptake and that could become near-term opportunities for the specialist information publisher:
- Business books – I think that ebook readers could be adopted by companies to distribute business books, reports, industry magazines and blogs.
- Schools and colleges – I believe there is a huge opportunity for schools and colleges to utilize these devices to provide a much greater variety of books and information for their students. It is common for teachers and professors to have their students read just a single chapter of a textbook, but this can be impractical in the physical world. Ebook readers could be the answer.
- Books without publishers – More and more books are being written and published without publishers. Many of them are available only in digital format to minimize costs for authors. If this trend continues, which I think it will, then ebook readers could become important devices.
- Value-added books – One trend that could happen is books becoming enhanced by third-party comments. For example, Tony Blair could add notes to Bill Clinton’s autobiography, giving his perspective on events. In a digital content world, annotating and distributing the enhanced version would be easy to do.
- Free books – There are thousands of books out of copyright. If these books became available for free to people with ebook readers, it could create demand.
- Green pressure – Creating books, newspapers and magazines is a very energy-wasting, resource-draining, green-unfriendly process. We chop down trees, transport them to factories, mash them into pulp, move the pulp to other factories to press into sheets, ship the sheets to plants to cover them with ink, then use large machines to cut and bind them, and finally ship them around the world. The ebook reader makes this whole process go away. This could be one of the biggest factors that will make ebook readers successful.
Conclusion
Ebook readers will take off in the future as the technology improves, prices drop and the “born digital” generation becomes the mass market. In the meantime, there will be pockets of opportunity for online content publishers. You will need to keep an eye on developments and be creative to generate revenues from this opportunity.
With proprietary formats, when you get a novel for digital download from Kindle it will arrive in their particular file format .AZW which only enables you to open it on the Kindle. So if in the future you decided you wanted to swap reading devices to a different make, your collection of e-books become of no use. Decide if it’s reasonable or not.
That state of affairs has been a big sticking point for the business in common but also for the makers of other reading devices in particular. They where on no account going to be able to offer the number of books Amazon where competent of doing and so this helped sales of the Kindle2 . And so they put forward support for additional file formats, mainly the Adobe .PDF, which is a choice standard for free e-books, but this standard does not reproduce a scaled down form of text that well as it was always meant to be reproducing text at an A4 size, just the thing for the Amazon dx and iLiad readers but not so for the lesser 5,6 and 7 inch screens.
And so came the Epub standard, an open source format intended to display text. It is fast emerging as the standard of the future and has received assistance from the likes of Google Library who should be releasing their total one million titles, of which the greater part are at no cost to download, in this standard. Barnes and Noble will also be going the same way to the same extent will the Sony-Store.
So you should see that the electronic reading devices that has support for this standard will be future resistant. Barnes and Noble’s Nook Wireless ebook reader has .Epub assistance, as does the Sony Daily Edition, and so you can down load your e-books from everywhere you wish, paid for or free, moreover not merely from the maker of the digital ebook reader, which is the case with the Kindle portable reading device.
The contemporary Nook wireless book reader being produced by B&N, the worlds principal high street book stall with in excess of 1,300 branches, looks set to lock horns with the worlds best selling digital e book reader, the Kindle .
Although not long launched, the Nook is searching to unsettle Amazon’s feathers even more by taking it on straightforwardly in a sector of the market, that up to yet, the Amazon Kindle has dominated. Since it’s inauguration, to begin with as the Kindle then later on in February 2009 as the Kindle , it has re-ignited the ebook reader market-place by offering a mix up of innovative technology, because of it’s instantaneous connect anyplace wireless networking and also the leading selection of titles available for download at excellent, cheaper than the high street, price.
Customers brought in to the model in a enormous way and it is only lately that the rest of the business have woken up to the reality that this is the future of book retail. An so in the most recent couple of months we have had the message from Sony of their intent to enlist in the fun, with their soon to be released Daily Edition, and the latest press release from Barnes and Noble that their own contender, the Nook, will return to full production in the not too distant future.
There are no misgivings that the Kindle2 is the device everyone is going after. And to be frank it’s nice to see a little opposition in this market. Yes we have had the iRex iLiad but it was a little on the large side to be a wireless portable reading device, perfect for office use with the 1:1 A4 imitation, but much like the Amazon dx – another wireless ebook reader – not something you will want to take on holiday, or put in your handbag or pocket for that matter, and it was on no account going to contend on price was it?
As a result now we have two sizeable companies prepared to go head to head, with the might of Amazon kindle, on all fronts. The book reader arm of sony in recent times increased the range of their library at the Sony-Store and reduced the prices of their digitally delivered novels to match that of Amazons and with any luck Barnes and Noble, who have continuously been in the equivalent ballpark price wise, will match them title for title as well.
Nevertheless the main news bulletin for clients has to be the move away from proprietary file formats, used by Sony corp. in the early days and nevertheless utilized by the Kindle now. To clarify the situation I will use Kindle2 as an example, remember this is still the case with the Kindle2 so it makes it more clear.
(to be continued)