[Web4lib] Amazon's Kindle e-book reader

[Grace J. Agnew]

Andrew,

I'm not sure about this.  I agree that a better business model is focus 
on niche markets, as I stated in an earlier post.  We also need to 
understand how much of a cultural icon the book is, the needs that it 
serves beyond the mere reading.  I get a "little lift" every time I 
enter my door and see all my books, on their shelves, that surround me. 
And I am sure I am not the only one who makes a beeline for the 
bookshelves in a stranger's house to see what kind of person he or she 
is.  Book as artifact of life may change and become quaint, and we may 
be looking at what is displayed on flat screens to gauge our new 
acquaintances, but I am not sure the change will be fast, or that the 
dropping of the Kindler e-reader price to $50 will make it happen more 
quickly.

However, as a former public librarian, I was thinking that a great niche 
market would be precisely to replace all those best sellers that public 
libraries had to buy or lease in multiple copies, but a year later, 
couldn't even give them away in a booksale.  I hate to think how many 
hard cover Danielle Steeles (or Steels, depending on the year) are 
adding to landfill.  In a large public library, it might be cost 
effective to loan out the kindles along with the books, just to zip 
through the hold queue and release the book back into the ether.  My 
sister owns a used bookstore and she literally can't give away the old 
best sellers that had their moment but simply aren't the books you read 
twice.  She's thinking about donating them to prisons now that even the 
hospitals and court waiting rooms are refusing them. 

I remember McNaughton lease books as being a lot of work, between 
maintaining the subscription, guesttimating the number of copies needed, 
shelving them, etc.  The Kindle and its ilk could be a lifesaver for 
those kinds of books.  And it sure helped to have a canny head of 
collection development.  I remember when Rushdie's Satanic Verses came 
out and the local bookstores refused to stock it, our advance holds went 
through the roof, but we didn't buy that many copies.  I asked the head 
of Collection Development if she was afraid of attracting terrorists if 
they saw a mound of the books.  She said no, that she took an advance 
copy home and the first chapter was almost incomprehensible.  She said 
everyone who checked out the book to see what the fuss was about would 
return it in a day or two when they couldn't get through the first 
chapter and we would move through the hold queue quickly.  She was 
right.  But that was one of the books we kept, in multiple copies, again 
because she herself had read it past the first chapter.

All this talk of books gets me reminiscing! 

Grace Agbew

Andrew Mutch wrote:
> Rich, 
>
> The problem with your analogy is that the e-book reader is a problem in search of a solution. You made the point yourself:
>
> "If the device serves a purpose, people will adopt it, and they will use it."
>
> So what purposes does an e-book reader serve that isn't fulfilled by the good old fashioned book? Is it cheaper? No. Is it more portable? For the vast majority of titles - No. Is it sturdier? No. Is it easier to read? No. Is it longer lasting? No. Does it have a longer "battery" life? Of course not and no electronic device is likely ever to match the book in this regard in the short or long-term. 
>
> E-book readers keep coming up short both as technology and as a business model because they are trying to replace a product that works with one that doesn't work as well. We all know that the best product doesn't always win out. But outside of technophiles who want to digitize their entire libraries and carry them around with them wherever they go, how many users in the consumer market will this appeal to? I'm not going to say that there's no place for something like the Kindle Reader. But as it has been, I think it's a very niche product. 
>
> In an earlier comment, someone alluded to the fact that if it was Amazon who produced this, it must have been thoroughly researched. But after seeing several generations of these products and their inherent shortcomings, I'm convinced that whatever market research has been done, it hasn't included very much with the people who come into our libraries every day and check out the books that we buy for our collections. Amazon might know best the people who buy books but I'm not sure that they know best the people who read books. If Amazon or the next e-book manufacturer spent 3 months watching and talking to patrons at public libraries large and small, I think they would come to some very different conclusions about what readers want from an e-book reader. 
>
> Lest anyone think I'm anti e-book reader, I'm not. I think there is a place for them but I think the people who have been making them, and this includes Amazon's Kindle Reader, are pretty clueless about the best application of this technology. Grace Agnew touched on one application that seems a no-brainer for e-books - college (and high school) textbooks. Bob Rasmussen touched on another one - the interactive story book. Many public libraries offer such titles on their children's computers where a child can have a popular children's story read to them, or read along with it or interact with the characters in various ways. This is the perfect combination of book and technology where the e-reader can really deliver what the printed book does not - sound, motion and interactivity. Load up a full color reader with sound and basic interface controls and a dozen children's titles and you could have a holiday hit on your hand. But the e-book manufacturers aren't interested in such n
>  i!
> che markets. They have their eyes on the big dollars that would come with convincing the James Patterson and Patricia Cornwell readers to set aside their hardcovers and paperbacks and settle back for an e-read (just as long as the battery stayed charge). Until they start to understand who reads what and why they do, I think we'll be destined to a line of "next great things" that will become relics sitting gathering dust in the basement (anyone interested in a REB1100? Hardly ever used)
>
> Andrew Mutch
> Library Systems Technician
> Waterford Township Public Library
> Waterford, MI
>
>
>
> ---- Original message ----
>   
>> Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2007 22:17:39 -0500
>> From: "Richard Wiggins" <richard.wiggins at gmail.com>  
>> Subject: Re: [Web4lib] Amazon's Kindle e-book reader  
>> To: "Roy Tennant" <tennantr at oclc.org>
>> Cc: web4lib <web4lib at webjunction.org>
>>
>> Roy,
>>
>> You are kind, and I am not a gentleman, at least not in this regard.  I held
>> that arrow in my quiver.  :-)
>>
>> And of course the jury remains out on Google Books and the various
>> digitization projects that unfolded since our first debate on the subject
>> of digitizing all the books in a major library -- back in 2001 believe it or
>> not.
>>
>> Steve Levy, who wrote the Newsweek piece discussed in this thread, was on
>> NPR's "Day to Day" and with another guest, a man of letters whose name I did
>> not catch.  Levy dominated.  Our friend of letters sailed forth with the
>> dangers of the hyperlink and how it had ruined reading in the land, and
>> begged for someone to defend the citadel of the book.  He called himself a
>> Luddite.  He was.
>>
>> Levy made a simple point.  Computers are 50 years old.  They used to fill
>> rooms (and I add, they didn't have GUIs).  Within 50 years, e-books will be
>> a dominant form of reading books.  Whether that's embodied in a specialized
>> device or a tablet PC of some sort, isn't the point.  The only question is
>> when, not whether.
>>
>> Levy pointed out that as an author of 6 books, he wants his readers'
>> undivided attention.  But whether he achieves that depends on his words, not
>> on the medium.
>>
>> As for Leo's argument as to whether special-purpose devices have a place in
>> this world, good grief, isn't that settled by now?  This year I bought a
>> combo blender / food processor.  It's a competent blender and weak as food
>> processor.  Multi-purpose devices are seldom the choice for all purposes.
>> Cell phone cameras serve social networking needs, not fine photography
>> desires.
>>
>> This month I was in Barcelona with three cameras: a 1 megapixel cell phone
>> camera, and two Canon cameras at about the same megapixel rating, an SD-1000
>> that is smaller than a pack of cigarettes, and an EOS Rebel XT that is a
>> digital SLR.
>>
>> Guess what?  I didn't use the cell camera, because the results are too low
>> quality.  I left the SLR in the hotel safe, because it's too big to carry
>> around.  I took over 500 photos with the pocket camera, which has the same
>> image processor as its cousin D-SLR, and good enough glass for the purpose.
>> If the device serves a purpose, people will adopt it, and they will use it.
>>
>>
>> Here's the analogy.  A PDA or iPhone is too small to comfortably read
>> books.  A laptop is too heavy and too slow to boot and too general purpose
>> to serve as a pure reading machine.  I won't ever read a book on an iPhone
>> screen, and youir laptop is slow to boot into your reader app.  Yes, Leo,
>> color matters, and could be a killer.  Yes, maybe the Kindle is a niche
>> device.  But it could be a large niche, and it could pave the way to the
>> real killer e-book readers.
>>
>> /rich
>>
>> PS -- Roy, my photos from Barcelona are at:
>> http://www.imagestation.com/album/pictures.html?id=2086582725
>>
>> This is the soon to be late and lamented Sony Imagestation site, shutting
>> down in 73 days due to lack of a business model.  Please feel free to rebut
>> my arguments, or my photos, as you wish.  :-)
>>     
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-- 

 

________________________________________________________________

Grace Agnew
Associate University Librarian for Digital Library Systems
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
Library Technical Services Building
47 Davidson Road
Piscataway, NJ 08854-5603

gagnew at rci.rutgers.edu
PH: (732) 445-5908
FAX: (732) 445-5888