Stick to Hardcover

Earlier this month, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos unveiled Kindle, his company’s newest take on one of the biggest futuristic technologies that never took off—the electronic book. Though a massive PR blitz has helped get the white, plasticky device backordered through the holidays, Kindle is unlikely to be the next sensation Bezos hopes it will be. As bloggers have been quick to point out, Kindle has many problems that must be addressed before it becomes a permanent fixture at Starbucks nationwide.

To be fair, Bezos deserves a lot of credit. In giving the e-book a facelift, his team made some impressive improvements that put Kindle light-years ahead of its predecessors.

The most basic improvement is its screen: Just like sitting in front of the computer all day, reading on previous e-book readers was a surefire way to get a headache. Kindle’s cutting-edge “e-paper” screen dispenses with the problem, reflecting light the same way as ink on paper. The ability to download books over the Internet directly from the machine (as opposed to connecting to a computer to get new content) also means that getting new books is even easier than using the library.

In addition, Kindle allows users to subscribe to newspapers and magazines and has a built-in Web browser. It has other perks, too, like long battery life, speakers for audiobooks, the ability to highlight text for future reference, and a built-in dictionary.

But consumers are quickly discovering that Kindle’s flaws outnumber its shiny, new features, as evidenced by the fact that it has only a three out of five star rating on Amazon’s own website.The biggest hurdle Kindle faces is its cost. Consumers used to the relatively inexpensive iPod (80 gigabytes for $250 at Amazon) may balk at Kindle’s $400 price tag. Worse, $9.99 per book feels like highway robbery, given that Amazon will deliver hardcopies of gently used books to your door for half that price, shipping included.

Using the device, by all accounts, is also a pain. The oversized page-turn buttons make it difficult to touch without paging halfway through your summer reading. Copy protection also makes it difficult, and in some cases pricey, to get books you already own on and off of your machine. PDF support is nearly nonexistent. And though Kindle’s 90,000 book selection is an improvement over past e-book readers, it is tiny relative to Amazon’s inventory (or Widener’s, for that matter).

Other advertised perks don’t fulfill their promise. Kindle only offers subscriptions to eight magazines, and most of the content is already available for free online, with better formatting. The Web browser is slow, colorless and unable to handle web sites that aren’t mostly text, which should be a letdown to anyone with an iPhone. And it’s likely that customers, used to bright, full-color screens even on basic cell phones, will find Kindle’s two-tone e-paper display a letdown, even if it does make reading easier.

Investors hope Kindle will be to books what the iPod is to music. But a huge selling point of the iPod is sleek, minimalist design (and a brilliant ad campaign). People buy iPods to look at almost as much as to listen to. Kindle, by comparison, is heavy, clunky, and utterly graceless. Its marketers will also have to struggle with the fact that reading, be it “Lord of the Rings” or “Lolita,” will never be as “hip” as listening to music.

In principle, of course, e-books are good for society—they save trees and promote reading in a trendy, new gadget form (particularly necessary for a generation already more comfortable reading newspapers online than in print.) It can’t be long before this form of reading catches on in a big way, especially as the range of books available in e-book form broadens. But even if the market does take off soon, Kindle won’t be leading the way.



Adam R. Gold ’11, a Crimson editorial comper, lives in Canaday Hall.