The Amazon Kindle

[ShannonA]

So what do folks think of Amazon's new Kindle device?

For those in an information blackout, this is their new ebook which only reads proprietary formats and is nonetheless getting a surprising amount of buzz.
http://www.amazon.com/Amazon-com-kindle/dp/B000FI73MA

Here's the boingboing discussion:
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2007/11/19/15-things-i-just-lea.html

Here's sfsignal's take:
http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/005906.html

Personally, I'm a pure luddite when it comes to ebooks. I've yet to see any type of electronic device that is as convenient as a paperback book.

Beyond that the kindle's budget-breaking cost of $400 seems pretty outrageous. That's a decent percentage of my book buying budget each year.

(And I'm not sure people need another excuse to sit on their butts in their houses, rather than out shopping in their town.)

[ShannonA]

A chilling article on some of the problems with ebooks:
http://diveintomark.org/archives/2007/11/19/the-future-of-reading

Another possible change: with connected books, the tether between the author and the book is still active after purchase. Errata can be corrected instantly. Updates, no problem.
Newsweek, The Future of Reading (http://www.newsweek.com/id/70983/page/5) Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.
George Orwell, “1984″, Book One, Chapter 3 (http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/articles/col-1984quotes.htm)


And:


Your rights under this Agreement will automatically terminate without notice from Amazon if you fail to comply with any term of this Agreement. In case of such termination, you must cease all use of the Software and Amazon may immediately revoke your access to the Service or to Digital Content without notice to you and without refund of any fees.
Amazon, Kindle Terms of Service (http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200144530)

[Matt-M-McElroy]

I'm a big fan of eBooks, but I'm not really sure this even qualifies for me.

The fact that I can't buy pdfs anywhere I want (such as RPGNow, Lulu or DrivethruHorror) and can only buy/read the specific product mentioned makes no sense to me.

The price is a little off as well, it seems like it costs more to do less.

Regards,

Matt

[sammiemendez]

I love ebooks. But I love print books, too. Both have a place. I think the price of the Kindle will come down substantially in a year, and it won't take long for someone to "hack" the unit so that it can be used elsewhere (i-phone, anyone?).

What ticks me off is that all my mobireader books don't work on the Kindle, even though Amazon OWNS mobipocket and (I think) it's pulling the Kindle inventory from mobipocket. I don't think people should have to buy a book twice just to use it on the Kindle.

[bardsandsages]

I love ebooks. But I love print books, too. Both have a place. I think the price of the Kindle will come down substantially in a year, and it won't take long for someone to "hack" the unit so that it can be used elsewhere (i-phone, anyone?).

What ticks me off is that all my mobireader books don't work on the Kindle, even though Amazon OWNS mobipocket and (I think) it's pulling the Kindle inventory from mobipocket. I don't think people should have to buy a book twice just to use it on the Kindle.


Did you get one? I haven't actually seen it yet. Yes, Amazon owns mobipocket, and I was pretty excited that they managed to get all of our mobipocket titles listed for the Kindle with minimal problems.

I believe you can upload existing PDFs to the Amazon Kindle server for free conversion, but from what I understand the conversions are a bit crappy.

I'm hoping that this does take off. With the Sony ereader pretty much flopping and all previous attempts failing, if the Kindle fails developers might lose interest in trying. And I really want to one day be able to carry all of my game books on one little reader!!! I don't have a bag of holding in real life!

[ShannonA]

Interesting article here that suggests that Amazon is trying to push the Kindle by removing their discount on mass-market paperbacks.

Ouch.

http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2007/11/26/kindle-pricing-so-low-that-amazon-is-no-longer-discounting-paperbacks/

[Matt-M-McElroy]

A small press publisher's take on Kindle:

http://flametoad.com/2007/is-interest-finally-kindling-for-e-books

Also, a completely unbiased Publisher's Weekly view:

http://www.publishersweekly.com/blog/670000267/post/1070017707.html

Also from PW:

http://www.publishersweekly.com/blog/760000476.html#200018020

Regards,

Matt

[sammiemendez]

Did you get one? I haven't actually seen it yet. Yes, Amazon owns mobipocket, and I was pretty excited that they managed to get all of our mobipocket titles listed for the Kindle with minimal problems.


No, I can't afford one yet. :( But I was talking with someone who DID manage to get one, and she said that she couldn't get her existing mobi-files to work on it.

[ShannonA]

Author Charles Stross has his thoughts on the Kindle here:
http://forum.xenagia.net/showthread.php?t=1049

[Quasar]

So what do folks think of Amazon's new Kindle device?


I can't say I'm interested at all. But then I don't expect it ever to be available in Australia.

But generally speaking, I have no interested in ebooks. I'm much more interested in unabridged audiobooks.

The exception to this is comic books. I'd love a colour version of the Sony Reader that I could get my weekly comic fix with.

[mike-13]

What I have found that converting normal or easy text, word doc or pdf file to kindle is quite easy but if the pdf file consists of lot of images and tables the conversion process does not work properly and the whole layout of the ebook gets change.

Kindle is still in experimental stage in converting the complicated pdf file to kindle format, but very recently I came across one website which provide ebook conversion service along with kindle ebook conversion (http://www.itglobalsolution.com/mobipocket/amazon-kindle-ebook-conversion.htm) at very affordable rates, mostly for the PDF ebook which consists of tables and images which are quite tough to convert them to ebook format such as mobipocket, kindle or MS reader, but I have found that the above ebook conversion company converts these type of ebooks in more profession and efficient way at very reasonable rate.