I apologize once more for the cruddy title. I don’t usually do memes, but the release of the Kindle from Amazon.com and the subsequent discussion are just too much to resist.
Design
Once upon a time, design wasn’t important for electronic devices. Makers were much more concerned with what the device did. The Kindle reminds me of this era- functionality first, design second. Which is fine, but if that’s the case, be honest. Jeff Bezos said on an interview on NPR “this device is beautiful” … “this device is gorgeous” but immediately after he says “if you look at the device, it has long buttons that go up and down the length of the device on both the right hand side and the left hand side. And that’s because people like to shift their hand posture when they read it avoids fatigue.” Bezos confuses design and functionality. A device can be perfectly functional and usable without being beautiful, but the current trend is to make beautiful AND usable objects. (I should mention, I do like the lovely design on the back.)
The ad copy on the Amazon Kindle page is more practical – it does not mention design, instead focusing on features and usability. Compare this to the description of the iPod, which mentions “good looks” “Beautifully redesigned” and “sleek all-metal enclosure.”
Looks are not everything- but don’t pretend to be something you’re not.
Audience
The video on the Kindle page shows a young, 20 something that alternately looks like a business man and student. (He also looks smug to me, but maybe I’m imagining things.) For the on the go young professional who loves to read for leisure and has money to burn, this may very well be the thing.
But, when Michele Norris asks Bezos about the Kindle and its possible effect on late teens’ reading habits (which I admit is a loaded question) Bezos says “it makes reading easier for people so Kindle is going to be one of those things that causes people to read more and especially that demographic that you’re talking about [late teens] there will be a certain amount of glamor associated with this way of reading.”
There seems to be confusion about who the audience is. A co-worker played the NPR interview with Jeff Bezos to his undergrad class, and the agreement was that no, this is not going to be a new, glamorous way of reading. I doubt late teens are that different from college students, and I doubt they would want a $400 e-reader instead of, or even in addition to, a laptop. If you’ve read much about kids and their laptops (or cellphones, for that matter), you know that most of them already have a device for reading. (And, you can find a decent laptop that will do much more than read e-books for $400.)
I don’t know if anyone has considered that teens don’t read novels because they’re freaking BUSY. Have you seen the schedule of a teenager lately? Most work, go to class, participate in clubs, hang out with friends, volunteer (especially if required by school) and spend a lot of time creating and sharing content. Who has time to sit around and read a novel? I digress though.
I think the main audience for the Kindle will be middle to older aged mid to upper class suburbanites. The audience will have enough money to not be particularly bothered that they’ll be buying books that can only be read on one device – they’ll be more concerned with convenience. Again, not a bad thing, but why try to be young and hip when you’re not?
DRM
Of course, the Kindle takes a new, giant step… backwards when it comes to DRM. Wanna transfer your Kindle books to your computer so you can read them? Too bad. (at least, not yet) What if you lose your Kindle? Well, Amazon will back up your books for you, so that’s good, but you can’t see them again until you buy a new device. Wanna sell off that book you already read? No way. Want to print out a hard copy of a passage to share with your poor, deprived, Kindleless friends? Silly you. You don’t own the book you bought, you just licensed it. So, unless you’re willing to lend out the whole $400 device, no sharing. Makes me winder if the high price is to discourage people from doing just that. Want to get your PDF documents on the kindle? You can mail them to yourself for $.10 apiece, and it will be converted into the proprietary format. So you can’t, say, annotate a word document and then transfer it back to your computer. You MIGHT be able to forward it onto a friend, provided he or she has a Kindle, too.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that I’m not a big fan of this DRM’d all to hell policy. It’s still unclear exactly how strict the DRM is, but that will become clear in the coming weeks. In any case, it sounds icky. Plus, I can’t buy manga for it, so what’s the point, really?
The future of the book
In all this talk about the Kindle, it is inevitable that people will use phrases like “this is the future of reading.” I just don’t think that is the case. This is a device to enable the way we read in the recent past and some still do in the present. Cory Doctrow notes that “You Do Like Reading Off a Computer Screen,” you just don’t like reading novels there. The nature of the internet changed what we choose to read. Doctrow compares novels to Opera, and notes “Opera survives, but it is a tiny sliver of a much bigger, looser music market.” The sky will not fall if novels cease to be the main literary form. They’ll still be around, and people will make devices to read them, but an increasing number of people will find their entertainment on the unsanitized web, and for that, they’ll need a computer. Hopefully one with a better screen and battery life than we currently have.
Why now?
It seems like these conversations converged for me recently. I bought an OLPC partly because I want to use it as an e-book reader. I know the screen won’t be as nice as e-ink, but I’ll be able to get my reading material from lots of different places, not just Amazon.com.
We just finished our discussion on e-books in my “Intro to Information Technology Class.” Not surprisingly, most of my classmates thought that e-books would be predominantly for educational material, because, of course, no one wants to curl up with a computer.
Except for me, of course, I wuv my cuddly computer. Or, at least, I will wuv my cuddly computer once I get my OLPC XO machine. If I want, I can curl up on the couch and read on the TV. Don’t get me wrong, I love reading actual paper books- that I’ve checked out from the library. My last move was enough to convince me to stop buying so many books. I don’t read much in the way of novels these days, but between blogs, web pages, research, emails, and school reading, I probably go through the equivalent of one or two novels a week. Of course, that doesn’t count, now does it?