The Kindle Problem 07 October 2009

Today Amazon announced the Kindle book reader will go on sale internationally on October 19.

I love the idea of the Kindle and indeed ebooks in general. I am really looking forward to the day ebooks become the de-facto standard for distributing and reading books. That doesn’t mean I won’t be sorry the day the last book printer shuts down its presses, but ebooks are coming whether we like it or not. On the beach, on a train, lunch break at work, or Dentists waiting room- wherever I find myself with time to kill I can instantly get back to reading that latest Terry Pratchett I’ve been ploughing through. Spelling mistakes, misprints, inaccurate information can be corrected automatically.

Back in April I noted that due to a libel case against Ben Goldacre and the Guardian, Goldacre’s Bad Science book was missing a chapter. After the case was dropped, the book was republished with the missing chapter returned in place. I bought the first edition, and was thus missing the additional chapter. Had this been an ebook edition, ping magically the book could be updated.

Having all the books I own contained on a single device will save so much shelf space, not to mention the ecological benefits of not having to print and transport heavy crate loads of questionable material such as Learning to Fly by Victoria Beckham.

Cutting out the printing and transportation costs could allow more of the profits from sales to go directly to the authors, and not get swallowed up by publishing companies.

But will I buy one? Erm… I don’t know.

First the Kindle platform itself gives Amazon monopolist potential as a book retailer. This isn’t good for readers, authors or publishers, Charlie Stross explains the last two better than I can.

The price problem. My example: ‘Unweaving the Rainbow’ by Richard Dawkins. Amazon.com the paperback version of the book for $10.17. The Kindle edition of the book is $13.79. Or take Derek Powazek’s example of “I Will Teach You To Be Rich”, ($8.37 paperback : $9.99 Kindle)

So lemme get this straight. It costs $8.37 for me to get a book made of paper, laboriously printed on dead trees, shipped across an ocean, put on trucks and planes and delivered to my door. But for me to download an endlessly copied digital file, it costs a $1.62 more. In what universe does this make sense? #

Maybe the extra $3.62 goes towards the costs of transferring 485 KB of book over the Whispernet network. But consider the limitations that the Kindle edition has over the paperback version.

Consider the debacle over deleting novels by George Orwell from customers Kindle’s in the wake of a copyright issue. The gay deranking scandal.

Consider your existing library of books. One of the great successes of the iPod was that you could take the music you already owned and make it even more enjoyable thanks to this amazing device. The Kindle has so such system for the books you already own. I own a lot of books, many of which I would like to have as ebook editions. But I won’t be buying them all again.

The Kindle lock-in is not something I want to be part of. At this point some will voice the opinion about the Apple-iTunes-iPod music lock-in. It’s bollocks. There is no Apple monopoly stranglehold over music, there is no “once you have an iPod and iTunesyour music is locked under Apple’s control” format issue, keep your music as MP3 and you can take it anywhere you like. The Kindle is different, it really is a format lock-in. DRM means you can’t share the book, you can’t lend it to a friend, you can’t resell it. The Kindle DRM curtails the once thriving second-hand book market, public libraries, and one of my personal passions- the lending of books between friends. Books are too important to lock up with DRM. It didn’t work for music, and I certainly hope it doesn’t work for books either.