Fewer Cheetos and other Kindle-related observations

"Always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual." - Terry Pratchett

I've been using the Kindle e-book reader now for a solid month. I'd like to be able to say that I either love it or hate it, but I can't. The reading experience isn't better or worse than a paper book, just rather different. And there have been some surprises - fewer of a technical nature and more of those that are behavioral or social. So...

• I am much neater about eating and drinking around this device. It's one thing to get Cheetos fingers on a book page; quite another to gum up this pearly white and costly machine.
  
• While it is very nice having the decreased weight of multiple books on a trip, it's almost unnerving not to be able to read during take off and landing. The airline magazines suck. I worry about leaving this machine (I suppose I should give it a name) in the airline seat pocket - which I have done more than once with a paperback.
  
• The LWW is not happy when I buy something for the Kindle that she also wants to read, such as Sedaris's When You Are Engulfed in Flames (which is very funny). She also needs to ask me what I am reading on a regular basis - sometimes 2-3 times a day. The relatives who normally buy me a Barnes & Noble gift cards are now flummoxed.
  
• Non-fiction doesn't hold my attention any better on the Kindle than it does on paper. I am finding the much celebrated Here Comes Everyone a little tedious. Sorry, fans. Perhaps I am just in a summer mindset, requiring my books revolve around guns, goons and gorgeous girls rather than the social implications of Web 2.0.  Zzzzzzzzz.
  
• It's annoying to find a book you want to read NOT available for the Kindle. I can see I will need to use two formats - print and electronic - for quite some time. There are some books this device just doesn't do justice to. The Back of the Napkin which depends on graphics to get its message across is a poor choice for reading on the Kindle.
  
• I was really hoping that the adjustable font size would allow me to read without having to find my K-Mart reading glasses. It is certainly possible to make the text that big, but it then means turning the page every 30 seconds. Four or five words per line doesn't help the narrative flow. The clicking noise of the select wheel drives the LWW nuts when she is trying to get to sleep.
  
• It is much more difficult to find your place after losing it on the Kindle than in a print book. And given the unfortunate, much lambasted position of the page turn buttons, it is very easy to lose one's place. If you let somebody borrow the device to play with, you can be assured you will be spending time finding your place again.
  
• The device has a primitive web browser, but the software is pretty crumby yet. I don't see that Amazon has much incentive to improve it since one could use it to read for free the blogs it sells on a subscription basis. I've not yet used the device to listen to an audiobook or a song or to view a photo. I did trial subscriptions of both a newspaper and a blog. The newspaper didn't have the funnies and the blog was expensive so the subscription to neither lasted past the trial.
  
• I love how the Kindle tells you the time. If you press ALT-T while reading, a small script appears that says, "Six minutes of eight." or "Half past seven." Just as though you had asked a person.
  
• I am amazed at the body of support that has already developed around the Kindle. Stephen Windwalker is releasing the draft of his book The Complete Users Gide to the Amazing Amazon Kindle. Lots o' blogs, discussion groups, etc. "I was so busy learning how to use the book, I never got around to reading it," Groucho might now say.
  
• My mother-in-law's biggest complaint is that Amazon allows one to read the beginning of the book rather than the last chapter before purchase. Margaret always reads the end of a book to make sure it has a happy ending before she buys it. Given that only English majors and film critics much care for tragic endings, perhaps Amazon should re-think its preview policy.
  

Will I keep using it? You better believe it - I've got $360 wrapped up in this puppy. It works great for trips. It's much easier to read at a table when eating alone.  It has features I've not yet explored enough. And it does become transparent when the reading material is compelling. It just needs to be priced much, much lower to find a popular market.

It is the future. Have you noticed that the future always seems to take some getting used to?

Does reading the Kindle make your brain...

larger or

smaller?

A sentimental nod to print

The print edition of Slovenly Peter my grandmother read to my siblings and me that still bears the crayon imprint of my little brother - along side its replacement?

Call me a sentimental slob, but I woke up this morning feeling sorta mournful. My Kindle arrived via UPS yesterday afternoon and I spent some time playing/learning/reading the device last evening. I am planning to take it and NO print books to ALA and NECC. The acid test.

It is eminently, uh, pragmatic.

I've been an advocate for silicon replacing cellulose since 1995. E-books hold tremendous potential for education - helping (and de-stigmatizing) struggling readers, reducing backpack weight, and even lowering textbook costs. Yet now that this practical device is actually here, I have to admit there are some important things I will miss about paper books:

• How will you start a conversation with the person next to you on an airplane if you don't have the safe opening of "How's that book you're reading?"
• How will you learn about the people who have invited you over if you can't peruse their bookshelves? (A LibraryThing account or Facebook book list just aren't the same.)
• How will you impart memories of love and excitement about books in toddlers who are learning to associate reading with physical closeness, bright pictures and personal attention?
• How likely are children to collect "e-books" that, like in my brother's case above, they make their own?

OK, I am sure when the horseless carriage replaced the horsed carriage, many shed a tear or two over the sweet smell of hay and manure. But the Kindle really does feel like the end of print books - objects that have been near and dear to my heart since I was read the horrible Slovenly Peter on my grandmother's lap.

Is this just sentimentality or will there be real loss as reading moves from cellulose to silicon?

Note to Amazon: Make the click wheel click quieter. It drives my wife nuts! 

Kindle and questions

I finally bit the bullet and ordered a Kindle. Recent posts by Kathy Schrock (1,2), Seth Godin and Lee LeFever along with two upcoming workshops at ALA and NECC about the impact of ubiquitous computing on education finally moved me. (Despite no small controversy over DRM and privacy issues raised by Peter Rock and Jason Griffey among others.) Oh, Amazon dropping the device's price didn't hurt either.

My biggest question right now is just what sort of titles I will purchase for the device. In our house, a paper fiction book usually gets a good workout - often read by both the LWW and me and then passed on to various relatives. Every now and then I clear my bookshelves by donating a few dozen books to the public library for their collection or book sale fundraiser. I suppose I could purchase a second Kindle for my wife (her birthday is coming up but then she seems to have her heart set on a new trash compactor) since multiple readers can be tied to a single account, but that seems excessive and expensive.

My thought is to read primarily non-fiction on the device - books on educational technology, social computing and the like that normally only I am interested in. I can see the advantages of being able to search such titles. What I don't get is why some of these titles are MORE expensive for the Kindle than in print. I checked my next planned book purchase, Clay Shirkey's Here Comes Everybody only to find I could get it for $10.88 in paperback, but it costs $15.42 for the Kindle version. Blows my "pay-back" theory to kingdom come.

One of LeFever's comments did resonate and hope he is correct when he wonders about "how Amazon will use it and it's Digital Text Platform to create a micro-payment economy for authors." But then I wonder if he knows this ability is already present using Lulu, where content can be sold or given away both in print and non-proprietary digital forms. At the current time, the number of readers who can open pdf files must be several orders of magnitude greater than Kindle owners.

The success of e-books is looking increasingly dependent on how cost and copyright issues will play out. For many of us accustomed to the right to sell, borrow, lease, share or re-gift print books under the first-sale doctrine, a single use/user "book" doesn't make much economic sense, despite the convenience.

Buying dozens of Kindles for school libraries isn't making much sense to me either. And at least one librarian, K.G. Schneider, predicts, " If the Kindle’s DRM model becomes standard, you can kiss libraries goodbye."

If the Kindle winds up in my Drawer of Unused Toys, I'll at least have the cold comfort that it was neither the dumbest nor most expesive of its kind I've made. And the geek and book lover in me are excited.

Is the Kindle the future?