I totally agree that functionality and price kill all current ebook readers.

The only edge I can see for dedicated ebook readers is electronic paper displays. Having read books on both the Kindle and the iReX Iliad as part of a test programme at work, I'm convinced that backlighting is an issue for on-screen readability.

Would I buy a dedicated ebook reader now? Yes, but only at the $100-200 mark. (I actually like them.)

The ideal? An iPhone -- with VPN and necessary plugin support -- with switchable electronic paper/led.

I suspect though there is at least some uptake and prices will keep dropping. My brother mentioned the other day that he's been seeing more and more of these on the L in Chicago, especially in the loop. While sales might be low, I do suspect that Amazon never expected them to start out high. They sold out the first batch, which indicates to me this is really a test ground.

Where are we going to see early adoption? I suspect exactly the group my brother is observing. Middle to upper class folks who still end up commuting and read frequently. I also wouldn't be surprised to see some evolution towards cheaper and smaller devices or ebooks on larger cell phones.

If the kinks get worked out with this market there's the chance it'll spread.

Roy, I also think that specialized ebook readers like the Kindle will be defeated by general purpose mobile devices. I have my own bet in digital publishing, Safari Books Online, and it represents nearly 18% of my book sales, and it's a web solution, not an ebook device solution.

I also struggle with Amazon's DRM and sole-source approach, which seems to me to be a flawed copy of Apple's iPod strategy, missing not only Apple's brilliant design but also the positive externality that consumers could easily add their own music collection to the device by ripping mp3s.

But I still thought Evan's analysis, based on the well known method of gathering data from the supply chain, had enough meat to it to be read more widely.

And just because something is a risky bet for the long haul doesn't mean that we shouldn't give it encouragement. Amazon has broken a lot of wonderful ground (instant purchase, for instance) that will be useful to build the marketplace. Failure provides nutrients for the next crop.

Tim O'Reilly

Uck, just lost another comment. But I just wanted to follow up with I've always dreamed about a device that was a bit larger than a paperback book, smaller than a tablet. It would be able to browse the web (with a decent browser), have several "readers" on it, and lately I'd want it to be able to play music files, video files, and flash movies. I understand the draw to the "e-paper", but I'd exchange lower readability for more functionality.

Roy,

We've had our disagreements on other topics but not on this one. I wholeheartedly agree with you about Kindle (and other current e-book readers). They are ridiculous, in my opinion. Amazon isn't ridiculous, mind, but this device is.

And I'm reading e-books (although not that often) just fine on my own using a jailbroken iPod Touch, thank you very much.

Or ask me - I love my Kindle! I'm really surprised to hear you rant about a first generation product like this, but as always, YMMV. It doesn't work for you? Fine. Great. But it does work for some people.

I have a strong dislike for the closed-system iPhone, but if you want to read ebooks on a screen that small, you go for it. Why you need to call readers with different preferences stupid is puzzling, though.

Ironically, I just saw my first Kindle at a conference yesterday, but that was the first time I'd EVER seen one. While I'm no expert on this, I definitely agree with you.

@Jon Gorman: aside from relatively poor battery life (2.5-3 hours), would an Asus Eee or similar ultraportable laptop suffice? Mine has a ~9" screen, and I swapped the bundled Xandros Linux distro for Ubuntu 8.04. One can go smaller than the Eee and its peers, of course, but then one loses the keyboard and a screen large enough for watching video with. I find the iPod/iPhone screen a bit cramped for video, myself.

Your comment system rather sucks. To summarize what it just ate...

Love my kindle, never seen an iphone in the wild nor do I know anyone that has/wants one, but I've run into other kindle users.

Apparently even some Amish have heard about it too, but the comment system doesn't allow URLs.

Thank you all, for the wonderful feedback. First let me rush to apologize to Jenny Levine and any others who I may have offended. It wasn't my intent to call anyone who made the choice to buy a Kindle stupid, although I see where that could be construed from what I wrote. I simply should not have written that one short sentence. So I apologize. I agree that people have different desires in devices and the Kindle definitely has found an audience. What I was trying to do, clumsily, I admit, was to call into question the idea that it is a hidden runaway hit. I actually think it is a hidden runaway flop. Time will tell whether I'm right or wrong, and if I'm wrong it will be neither the first nor the last time.

Notes to others: Tim, thank you so much for gracing my humble blog with your thoughtful comments. I really can't find anything to argue with in your comment.

Steve, I welcome an agreement among our disagreements. Let's hope there will be more.

Jon and Rob, I disagree that the comment system sucks...I think it way more than sucks. I've complained and complained and complained and so far I've gotten nowhere. I'm sorry.

Roy:

Like everyone else in Publishing, I have skin in the game as we all want ebook readers to work as it opens a new channel and audience of readers. That said, I have found that there seems to be only two arguments to date that people use to determine Kindle or Reader sales - whether they would buy one and whether they have seen people with them. Neither seem quite scientific enough for me - so I went searching for real data in the supply chain. The fact is that screens are being sold to Amazon and Sony (and btw, the article was about both!) at amazing rates that are nearly doubling and that has to tell you something. I may be stupid and on drugs, but my methods arent.

Thanks, Roy. The Kindle is a step in the right direction, and one of the things I don't think non-Kindle users understand is that Amazon has once again made a dramatic improvement to the delivery system. I think you're right that the Kindle is not the penultimate ebook reader and that it's not ubiquitous, but then I'd say that about every other ebook reader out there, including the iPhone. (How many people are really reading ebooks on an iPhone anyway? Another number that is difficult to ascertain.) I'm looking forward to the next evolutionary step.

I love the Kindle and I am a librarian. In fact every one of the librarians at our library who has tried it (there is a waiting list) has liked it. Yes none of us own one, but that says more about how little librarians are paid than it does about the cost of the Kindle. It is a first generation product and will surely improve with user feedback. As for reading on cell phones or iPhones, you can forget it. The small screen is a real impediment for many users.

Here is my review of the Kindle: librarygoon. wordpress. com
/2008/04/16/
my-short-life-with-kindle

@Sharon Goetz

I've got a friend who has a EEE and in some ways it's tempting. The screen on his is still smaller than I like, but has promise. I hear that the next generation EEEs will have a screen a couple inches bigger, which would be just perfect. I'd just put on a new OS, which doesn't scare me at all. then I'd have a nice system for taking notes as well. (Now I'm pondering something that would have a motion sensor as well, can't remember if the EEE would have it. Then when I "rotated" it would bring up a text program and split the screen with whatever I'm reading.

Went to post a comment, but it grew too large. Posted to Pattern Recognition instead:

www.jasongriffey.net/wp/2008/06/12/kindle-in-flames

The price is the only thing keeping me from this period.

Safari Books Online is all dandy but I want BOOKS online. Good old fashion BOOKS.. novels, biographies etc etc

Roy, I didn't think I wanted a Kindle until I met one in the flesh. It looks a lot better in RL than in the ads, it's incredibly lightweight, and for people who travel a lot, it's a boon.

If I asked my neighbor or the first person walking down the street the Kindle question, I'd also have to ask do they have a library card (likely not), an iPod (also probably "no"), etc. Something can be enormously successful and not ubiquitous.

Karen, I hear you that perhaps most people you meet on the street don't have a library card, but over a year ago Apple had sold 100 million iPods, and that's a lot in anyone's book. And frankly, none of these devices are where the success really is. It's in selling the content for them, and for that the more devices in the market the better. I'm just doubting that the Kindle is going to be the runaway success that many have predicted it to be. If it isn't, then it will eventually go the way of all previous e-book readers before it. I'm still waiting for the killer e-book device, having so far not seen it.

In light of this conversation and also because I spoke positively of using an iPhone/iPod Touch as an ebook reader, I thought the following post from Lifehacker hilarious:

Turn Your iPhone into a Moleskine Book Moleskine

(I would include the link to it if I could.)

I have a Kindle. I love it

Breaking news: Amazon just sent me email saying they had dropped the price on the Kindle. Typically, that happens for only one of two possible reasons: either sales are not great (if they were, if your cost to produce it dropped you wouldn't necessarily drop the price of the product if were selling like hotcakes), or a new model is coming out and they want to reduce inventory. You choose.

Have an iPhone. Tried reading books on it... impossible and annoying. Headache after 5 minutes and you are sliding horizontally across text in landscape mode waiting for screen refresh etc..... I would have to be really, really bored somewhere to do that. Now watching videos... Great@! I've watched whole movies and lots of tv episodes. Waiting for the next get kindle.

Tell me about any other device that you can read on the beach, stores 200 books and has a battery that lasts seems to last forever. The iPhone certainly can't.

I won't be getting either a Kindle or an iPhone unless I get a very large raise. I make Librarian wages, but cannot live without horses. There's nothing left for technology devices beyond one basic desktop computer, two cheap cell phones, and ham radio equipment. In any case, my feeling about e-book readers is summed up by comparing them to a book: if you are reading in bed and you fall asleep, the book falls out of your hands onto the floor, and then the 70-lb. dog steps on it, an e-book reader will not survive. A book will.

Remember the comment "get a horse" early in the last century as people watched the horseless carriage perform. Sorry pal, but your comments are really retrograde. The Kindle is the death knell to the paper book.Oh the printed book will still be around for a decade or two, but then like the print newspaper, paper books will morph into valuable and nostalgic antiques. Its all about content and ease of delivery. If dedicated readers will add up all costs and compare a Kindle download to a paper book purchase (or even a trip to the library)and count transportation costs, the economics of the Kindle will become clear.Predict away. How many horse and carriages do you see these days in your neighborhood?

Warren, the problem is that you can pick the horse and the automobile to prove your point and I can pick the radio and TV to prove mine. We can debate examples up and down the street. In the end, there is only what really happens. All I've been suggesting so far is that there are amazing claims being made for the success of the Kindle and there is precious little evidence to back it up. I keep saying, if it is the runaway success that some people think, why doesn't Amazon make sales figures available like Apple does for the iPhone (for example, www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/01/21results.html )? On reason _may_ be because they don't live up to the hype. As far as I can tell, I'm the only person out there questioning this.

I really like your post. Does it copyright protected?

Well, as a Kindle owner, this is what I can say: at least in U.S., the dealmaker is the Whispernet: i.e. free wireless Internet. Good for looking up Wikipedia, or even most websites (i.e. ones that don't rely on heavy Javascript and Flash), and you can use it with services like GMail.

After you factor in the cost of a wireless subscription for, e.g. iPhone or any mobile device, Kindle more than pays for itself in less than a year on what you save on data plan. For someone like me who doesn't really use a phone (I have a cell phone on prepaid plan that I can get by with around $100/yr), Kindle (plus a prepaid cell phone) is a far more cost-effective option that does the same thing as iPhone, except with a larger screen and better battery life.

Also, reading on Kindle is easier on your eyes (and less distracting!) than any other device, including laptops and netbooks. If you can find someone nearby who has a Kindle (and you read anything at all, like blogs or magazines, if not books and newspapers), I recommend that you arrange a meeting to look at the Kindle and handle it first-hand before making up your mind.

Amazon has a place on their website where you can arrange these meetings (I won't link to it because I don't want this to sound like advertising).

I'd give it 10 years. Have you seen this link yet:

latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/04/newsplastic-electronic-ink-flexible-screens-wireless.html

I go with the conclusion "Kindle,a flash in the pan..." It's big downfall is in it's single-functionality. It does one thing and one thing only. No new-media devices do that except maybe the ipod but even then, the ipod's advantage is IN its mobility. the kindle is no more or less mobile than the magazine or book that it would replace (sans # of books/ mags it holds, but really how much are we reading at any one given time.)How about just a laptop with an anti-glare function/ screen adapter?