Kindle: Incredible Reading Tool, Evil Book-Killer, or Overpriced Technology?
- by Renee Roberts
Amazon's Whispernet easily connects to the Kindle store.
by Renée Magriel Roberts
So, what currently has several issues of the New York Times Tuesday science edition, American Creation by Joseph J. Ellis, samples pages of Atonement by Ian McEwan and Michael Moore's Official Fahrenheit 9/11 Reader, Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns and John McPhee's Founding Fish, as well as the Messages and Papers of George Washington, Barack Obama's Audacity of Hope, Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma, and the Tuesday, February 5 issue of The Wall Street Journal?
Well that's currently what's on my Kindle, of course, Amazon's pretty amazing 10.3 oz. electronic paper reader. Fitting handily in my purse, the Kindle can hold around 200 titles with unlimited storage on Amazon's servers for other books and periodicals that I purchase. After waiting over a month for mine, my Kindle finally arrived in its own leatherette case, complete with paper manual, and cables for uploading files to my computer, as well as recharging its battery.
With Amazon's utter dominance of the on-line book market, this introduction of its own branded reading device is causing a lot of concern. Consider, for example, that the Kindle is sold only by Amazon; the files that Kindle takes are not open-source and so the books and other ephemera sold for the device also have to be sold by Amazon. This pretty much cuts out booksellers and publishers who do not wish to publish to the device.
One typical complaint was recently lodged by Jason Epstein, co-founder of On Demand Books in the April 2008 issue of M.I.T.'s "Technology Review." His main complaint, and an entirely valid one, is the price. At a hefty $400, the first book purchased for the Kindle at $10 will effectively cost $410; the first 20 books a reader buys will cost $30 each; the first 40, $20 each and so on. But, of course, this does not factor in other features of the Kindle.
For example, you can download on demand, anytime and just about anywhere. Using a high-performance cellular network, the Kindle can find Amazon's servers even when my AT&T cell phone cannot. While we have to go outside to make a cell call, I can sit on my sofa and download a book or current newspaper to my Kindle. Downloading a 200-page book takes less than a minute.
From an ergonomic point of view, the Kindle is really quite pleasurable to use (my husband does complain that his thick fingers don't work so well on the little keyboard). The electronic paper is easy on the eyes and I really like the feature that allows you to create your own font size. Moreover, the Kindle does not require a computer and has its own Amazon (and its own limited Web-based connection), so the learning curve is not very steep.
Bonhams, Apr. 8: First report outside of the colonies of the American Revolution, from American accounts. Printed broadsheet, The London Evening-Post, May 30, 1775. $20,000 - $30,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: Joyce, James. The earliest typescript pages from Finnegans Wake ever to appear at auction, annotated by Joyce, 1923. $30,000 - $50,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: Joyce's Ulysses, 1923, one of only seven copies known, printed to replace copies destroyed in customs. $10,000 - $15,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: ATHANASIUS KIRCHER'S COPY, INSCRIBED. Saggi di naturali esperienze fatte nell' Accademia del Cimento, 1667. $2,000 - $3,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: Bernoulli's Ars conjectandi, 1713. "... first significant book on probability theory." $15,000 - $25,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: Aristotle's Politica. Oeconomica. 1469. The first printed work on political economy. $80,000 - $120,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: John Graunt's Natural and political observations...., 1662. The first printed work of epidemiology and demographics. $20,000 - $30,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: William Playfair's Commercial and Political Atlas, 1786. The first work to pictorially represent information in graphics. $15,000 - $25,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: Anson's A Voyage Round the World, 1748. THE J.R. ABBEY-LORD WARDINGTON COPY, BOUND BY JOHN BRINDLEY. $8,000 - $12,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: La Perouse's Voyage de La Perouse autour du monde..., 1797. LARGE FINE COPY IN ORIGINAL BOARDS. $8,000 - $12,000
Bonhams, Apr. 8: Charles Schulz original 8-panel Peanuts Sunday comic strip, 1992, pen and ink over pencil, featuring Charlie Brown, Snoopy and Lucy as a psychiatrist. $20,000 - $30,000
Sotheby's Sell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
Sotheby’s: The Shem Tov Bible, 1312 | A Masterpiece from the Golden Age of Spain. Sold: 6,960,000 USD
Sotheby’s: Ten Commandments Tablet, 300-800 CE | One of humanity's earliest and most enduring moral codes. Sold: 5,040,000 USD
Sotheby’s: William Blake | Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Sold: 4,320,000 USD
Sotheby’s: The Declaration of Independence | The Holt printing, the only copy in private hands. Sold: 3,360,000 USD
Sotheby's Sell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
Sotheby’s: Thomas Taylor | The original cover art for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Sold: 1,920,000 USD
Sotheby’s: Machiavelli | Il Principe, a previously unrecorded copy of the book where modern political thought began. Sold: 576,000 GBP
Sotheby’s: Leonardo da Vinci | Trattato della pittura, ca. 1639, a very fine pre-publication manuscript. Sold: 381,000 GBP
Sotheby’s: Henri Matisse | Jazz, Paris 1947, the complete portfolio. Sold: 312,000 EUR
