The Amazon Kindle Pt. 2

I think the Kindle is probably one of the best gadgets out there right now. There are a few drawbacks but the drawbacks pale in comparison to the potential.

I wrote Amazon with some questions and recommendations to help people see some things about the Kindle (like how books like I am America and So Can You has jokes in the margin and how would that translate to the Kindle version) and they wrote back saying that if there was any book I wanted to see transribed to the Kindle to email them and they would contact the publisher to try to get it worked on as soon as possible.

I'm not worried about color especially at this point in time. Magazines with Kindle support are not using it to its full advantage anyway. Time is not putting things like graphs and pictures in there, newspapers aren't publishing comics and why? Certainly not because the Kindle can't support it. Just looking at the common picture depicting the cover of Freakonomics shows that it can support pictures, and even look pretty good doing it and yet these companies aren't doing their part. If they don't get on the ball it won't matter if the kindle has color support or not. It would be like having an unelievably fast car to drive to the corner store and back with. All that potential and no one using it.

But imagine how great it would be to store not only your recreational reading on it, but educational and professional books too. Imagine being a doctor and having all of your references right there in your bag or on your desk instead of on the book shelves or stored in your computer. Imagine being a college student and having to tote around your kindle in your backpack instead of the twenty or so pounds of books. In my career, I have publications that easily, EASILY go beyound three thousand pages and it would be a ton easier to have all that in something like the Kindle.

And price. College text books are so pricey, but if they offered them at a price that's reasonable considering they're cutting out distributors, printers, transport, and shelf space, then that savings would be passed on to the buyer. Imagine a whole semester's worth of books for 100.00 instead of 600.00.

Also, one of the things I really like about it is the fact that I could read all sorts of books and then populate my bookshelf with printed books that are ESPECIALLY amazing to me. My particular favorites. Over the years I've bought a ton of books I thought would be good only to be disappointed and those ones end up in totes which is just wasted space honestly.

It's an AMAZING invention as far as I'm concerned and most of the things that people complain about are either because they haven't lookd far enough into it, or because they're expecting something entirely different than what the device is meant to be. You don't buy a book expecting it to also function as, say, a hammer, even though if it's heavy and sturdy enough it could. So why expect an e-reader to also be an MP3 player? I also don't mind it not having a backlight. I just got done reading Survivor by the same author as Fight Club (can never remember how to spell his last name) on my computer and it was horribly hard on my eyes. The fact it looks like paper has been reviewed time and time again by the owners to save strain on their eyes making for longer and more comfortable reading sessions.

So all in all, it seems like a great invention for me, but I could see why people might not like it. I can especially see why book fans wouldn't like it, especially when you get into the idea that it or something like it might replace printed books as we know it (something I don't believe at all but have heard concerns about). I seriously doubt the printed book will go away any time soon.

All of that being said (and I do apologize for the length) I do think the price of the device is REALLY high. I also think the prices for magazine and newspaper subscriptions are also pretty high. True, the prices of magazines aren't so bad, but they aren't good enough when you think about all the money that is being saved by the company by publishing it on the Kindle as opposed to print. The profit margin should be the same percent in my opinion. And if they were to lower the price of the device to get it into more people's hands, more people would be buying more books, and more money and profit would be generated. Most video game developers lose money on every platform they make but make up for the money in software sold. Well, that used to be the case, anyway. I don't know about now with 600.00 systems out there. Anyhoo, this is a lesson I would urge Amazon to take heed of even though it's constantly sold out now.

I don't have one yet. It would be amazingly useful to me since I'm flying pretty often and always in need of a book, but I'm not in a place financially where I could justify getting it.

So, again, sorry for the long rant. It's just a device with a ton of potential that I feel doesn't get voiced enough. It's the potential of the device that appeals to me and honestly, if people don't stand behind a product with potential, the product will fall away due to lack of interest (meaning the potential will never be fleshed out unless it's done by some other thing).