Amazon’s Kindle?

November 16, 2007 By

Amazon is said to be releasing its new “Kindle” eBook Reader on Monday.

I won’t be at the press conference. They asked me to be there, but I am turning down all travel. But, I have a LOT to say about this — I wish I could say more now. So, check back on Monday.

Filed Under: Amazon Kindle
  • Skip

    As someone who has actually bought a few ebooks, something like this interests me, even at that high pricetag. But here are a few features that it would have to have to avoid being a non-starter.

    1. It needs to be able to display ebooks in all the popular formats (PDF, rtf, microsoft reader format, etc.) and not just its own internal formats.

    2. Purchased books need to not be tied to a device with a limited lifespan. I have dead tree edition books that I bought over 30 years ago that I still occasionally reread - take that away from me and it’s no sale.

    3. However - create a subscription service, like Zune Marketplace, where I can read anything from the library on the device and you can DRM the heck out of those. for that matter, make it just the back-catalog, or stuff that’s been out in paperback for 6 months. In a lot of cases I’m going to be reading stuff I already own. Just like a large portion of music on my zune I downloaded from them rather than going through the trouble of ripping it. Combine this with newspapers/magazines where you get the current issues and maybe 1 back issue and you may have a winner.

    You probably can’t tell me if it meets those criteria, but I guess we’ll find out Monday.

  • Skip

    As someone who has actually bought a few ebooks, something like this interests me, even at that high pricetag. But here are a few features that it would have to have to avoid being a non-starter.

    1. It needs to be able to display ebooks in all the popular formats (PDF, rtf, microsoft reader format, etc.) and not just its own internal formats.

    2. Purchased books need to not be tied to a device with a limited lifespan. I have dead tree edition books that I bought over 30 years ago that I still occasionally reread - take that away from me and it’s no sale.

    3. However - create a subscription service, like Zune Marketplace, where I can read anything from the library on the device and you can DRM the heck out of those. for that matter, make it just the back-catalog, or stuff that’s been out in paperback for 6 months. In a lot of cases I’m going to be reading stuff I already own. Just like a large portion of music on my zune I downloaded from them rather than going through the trouble of ripping it. Combine this with newspapers/magazines where you get the current issues and maybe 1 back issue and you may have a winner.

    You probably can’t tell me if it meets those criteria, but I guess we’ll find out Monday.

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