Thinking about buying a Kindle 2? Nicholson Baker from the New Yorker bought one, but then again, how could he not?"Everybody was saying that the new Kindle was terribly important—that it was an alpenhorn blast of post-Gutenbergian revalorization. In the Wall Street Journal, the cultural critic Steven Johnson wrote that he’d been alone one day in a restaurant in Austin, Texas, when he was seized by the urge to read a novel. Within minutes, thanks to Kindle’s free 3G hookup with Sprint wireless — they call it Whispernet — he was well into Chapter 1 of Zadie Smith’s On Beauty ($9.99 for the e-book, $10.20 for the paperback). Writing and publishing, he believed, would never be the same."
Baker gives a thorough review (seven pages online) of his Kindle 2, elaborating on his personal experience, as well as citing celebrities and "ordinary people" alike. With convincing arguments both for and against digital media, I do wonder if the Kindle or other similar devices will ever become mainstream and functional enough to truly replace ink on paper. [via The New Yorker]
We have written a lot about the Kindle -- Amazon's ebook reader which is transforming the way people read novels and newspapers.
Kindle is not the only game in town, however. Sony, Plastic Logic and other companies have developed their own ebook readers, which they hope will compete with the Kindle.If you are shopping around for an ebook reader, you might want to check out this buying guide on how to choose an ebook reader, from Wired.
EarlyWord blog reports that Amazon founder Jeff Bezo says the company’s Kindle ebooks now represent 35% of the total print sales of those same titles at the web retail site. That’s an increase from 13% just a few months ago. Amazon currently carries 275,000 titles for the Kindle.How much are ebook sales contributing to publishers’ bottom lines? The ebook news Web site, Teleread, analyzed stats from Association of American Publishers, showing ebook sales accelerating rapidly in 2008, but estimates they “ will still only represent 1/2 of 1 percent of book industry sales,” for the year, growing to 6% over the next five years.[via EarlyWord]
Another view on what the Kindle 2 will do to the practice reading, this one – interestingly enough – from the Fashion & Style section of The New York Times: With Kindle, Can You Tell It’s Proust? The author wonders:The practice of judging people by the covers of their books is old and time-honored. And the Kindle, which looks kind of like a giant white calculator, is the technology equivalent of a plain brown wrapper. If people jettison their book collections or stop buying new volumes, it will grow increasingly hard to form snap opinions about them by wandering casually into their living rooms.”
Two interesting reads about the fledgling ebook revolution, and how it may change the way we read, think, and act.In the first, How the E-Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write, Steven Johnson, writing for the Wall Street Journal online, tells about the “aha” moment he experienced one of the first times he used Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader:I knew then that the book's migration to the digital realm would not be a simple matter of trading ink for pixels, but would likely change the way we read, write and sell books in profound ways. It will make it easier for us to buy books, but at the same time make it easier to stop reading them. It will expand the universe of books at our fingertips, and transform the solitary act of reading into something far more social. It will give writers and publishers the chance to sell more obscure books, but it may well end up undermining some of the core attributes that we have associated with book reading for more than 500 years.
There is great promise and opportunity in the digital-books revolution. The question is: Will we recognize the book itself when that revolution has run its course?"
In the second, Curling Up With A Good Screen, Jacob Weisberg, writing for Newsweek, asks: “Why should a civilization that reads electronically be any less literate than one that harvests trees to do so?”He answers himself that it shouldn’t:When it comes to literature, I'm optimistic that electronic reading will bring more good than harm. New modes of communication will spur new forms while breathing life into old ones. Reading without paper might make literature more urgent and accessible than it was before the technological revolution, just as Gutenberg did.”
[Thanks to Troy Librarian Constance Doherty for passing on the WSJ article.]
Would you like to own a Kindle 2, Amazon’s latest generation ebook reader? Publisher Harper Collins, blog CrunchGear, and thriller author Andrew Gross are giving one away.The Kindle 2, which retails at $359, holds 1,500 ebooks. It is lightweight, ultra-thin, and completely wireless. You can now download books from your Kindle2 anytime, anywhere.Five second place winners in the contest will receive an autographed paper copy of Gross’ latest novel, Don’t Look Twice. You can read the first few chapters here.Then go to the contest page to enter. The contest ends on April 20.If you win, bring it by the the Technology desk at the Library. I would like to see it at work.
Amazon made news last month when it released its Kindle 2 ebook reader.Though the best known, the Kindle isn’t the only ebook reader out there. Here is a roundup of the pros and cons of seven of the most popular readers available today, from Wired.On a related topic, Sony – one of Amazon’s main competitors – has reached an agreement with Google to offer 500,000 public domain titles available from Google Book to Sony’s ebook users. This is the largest collection of any kind available for any ebook format.
Amazon has decided to modify the text-to-speech feature of its Kindle 2 ebook reader, after complaints from publishers who claim that the feature cuts into their market for professionally-read audio books.Amazon will allow publishers the right to choose whether to disable the text-to-speech feature on “a title by title basis.”Read The New York Times report of this decision.
