Amazon Kindle eBook Hardware
I’m focusing on on-screen reading and new devices that are powered by free software. Sadly the Amazon Kindle eBook hardware announced recently won’t be one of them; the software is full of DRM evil:
Bezos explains that it’s only fair to charge less for e-books because you can’t give them as gifts, and due to [DRM] you can’t lend them out or resell them. (Libraries, though, have developed lending procedures for previous versions of e-books—like the tape in “Mission: Impossible,” they evaporate after the loan period—and Bezos says that he’s open to the idea of eventually doing that with the Kindle.)
So much for Amazon being a champion of anti-DRM with its non-DRM MP3 music download service :-(
The details on the screen and the default font (which obviously you won’t be able to change):
…the Kindle, with its 167 dot-per-inch E Ink display, with type set in a serif font called Caecilia, can subsume consciousness in the same way a physical book does. It can take you down the rabbit hole.
And reminding me of Eben and Ashley’s comments,
Publishers are resisting the idea of charging less for e-books. “I’m not going along with it,” says Penguin’s Peter Shanks of Amazon’s low price for best sellers. (He seemed startled when I told him that the Alan Greenspan book he publishes is for sale at that price, since he offered no special discount.)
“What, you mean we can distribute a text to a reader for a massively smaller cost, yet you’re asking us to give the reader a discount? I’m not going along with it!” - LOL
Engadget has a review with pictures (at top) and links to video too.
The Amazon Kindle eBook Hardware by David Crossland, except the quotations and unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
November 19, 2007 |
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One Response to “Amazon Kindle eBook Hardware”
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“What, you mean we can distribute a text to a reader for a massively smaller cost, yet you’re asking us to give the reader a discount? I’m not going along with it!â€
Something interesting I’m seeing with ebooks is that they’re shifting from a model where the price is set by the cost of production and distribution to one where the price is set by the value of the information inside.
This is especially visible with books aimed at very specific niches - for example a paper book on writing short articles may sell for $12 of which the author gets a tiny royalty (“Complete Idiot’s Guide to Magazine Articles” - ISBN 0028638352 on Amazon.com), whereas the equivalent ebook sells for $47 of pure profit (“Perfect Article Writing System”, abwebconsulting.com).
Whereas fiction ebooks and attempts to translate the paper book business into a screen-based one have so far been failures, the “niche information product” market is absolutely booming.
Unfortunately this doesn’t bode well for fiction or the art of writing, as it favors throwaway “howto” advice over anything else. Coupled with the low barrier for entry and lack of accountability of the Internet it makes snake oil salesmanship an even more tempting and lucrative career while the artist-writer will find it even harder to make a living from their work.
Far from advancing the human race, is it possible that technology will consign it to perpetual mediocrity?