Hundreds of millions of tablets and e-readers have been sold, but today we’re still inclined to think of a book as words on a page. Amazon’s success with Kindle has hinged on recognizing how much more they can be. So where does the company go from here? In a series of rare, on-the-record interviews for Kindle’s 7th anniversary, Amazon executives sketched out their evolving vision for the future of reading. It’s wild – and it’s coming into focus faster than you might have guessed.
Unlike the spoken or digital word, cannot be changed as easily. It is not subject to the faults of human memory nor the whims of hacks, updates, and OS errors.
As much as I love to read novels on my Kindle (low cost way to preview a book), nothing beats the feel of a book. Hardbound with good paper – not the newsprint or school binding – is the best way to go.
Anyone who has read Fahrenheit 451 will appreciate a solid book.
All that said: eBooks and Audio formats are great. Listening to a book while driving or being able to carry your library in your pocket is amazing. Cheaper to read novels written by new writers.
So I will keep both: the physical book that remains as published as well as the electronic form that is portable and can be read as long as power is supplied.
Not to mention that the electronic edition doesn’t feel like you actually have anything. It’s a whisp of digital fluff.
That’s why, despite it making my bedroom a cluttered mess, my walls are literally covered in shelves of books, stacked two layers deep.
Same here, but is it just nostalgia? Will the next generation appreciate ink on sliced trees or will they laugh at our bookshelves the way we laugh at using a mainframe computer from the 70s to do computations that can be done today on a pocket computer?
If it’s just nostalgia, then let the next generation have something different.
But it’s not just nostaligia. With paper books, you can buy and read anonymously, and no one can remotely delete your paper book (or change it!). *Those* are values that we have to ensure get preserved in whatever form reading will be done.
Paper is made from pulp. Not slices of tree. In the same way that a Pringle isn’t a slice of potato.
You missed the point.
*nod*
That sentiment is why I always insist that my digital stuff (be it games, movies, or whatever else) be DRM free and my devices be unencumbered.
(My desktop runs Linux, my mobile device is an OpenPandora, and my eReader is a Sony PRS-505)
A book serves a certain purpose: a hard written record.
An eBook is an evolutionary branch in reading, in consuming information, but it is not a permanent record as it can be erased, altered, and of course requires power to read.
eBooks replace hardbound books in many cases, but they do not completely replace them.
Oh, and my teenage kids love hard bound books – though it helps that they were raised around them.
A mainframe is an inline evolutionary step in processing data. Not an apple to apple comparison to the Hard bound book.
Think of it this way. A Hard bound book is to a mainframe what an eBook is to an iPad or Kindle in terms of ease of use. One is more portable and easier to access than the other. But both are necessary in their own way.
I think paper books with proper pages also aid memory. Not that it’s easier to remember what you’ve read (although it might be), but it’s a lot easier to remember where.
only for 2 reasons:
-size
-weight
if I had to describe my experience with my kindle 3 (the one with a keyboard):
-dogslow
-piss poor pdf-support
-not sturdy enough
-horrible file-handling
-as good as no firmware-updates
as much as I love the e-ink display, my next reader will be a regular tablet with foxit-reader installed
Well, there’s three more:
– It doesn’t take up shelf space (though that might technically go under size)
– Being able to easily carry all your books with you
– Being able to increase font sizes helps, esp if you’re visually impaired like I am.
That said, I wouldn’t try reading a PDF on one. That’s what tablets are for
thats what I meant with size and weight
not with a pdf on a kindle
Ouch. I know PDF support isn’t ideal on my PRS-505 but font-size switching and reflow for PDFs generally works decently.
On my case, saving threes for technical books.
I don’t see the point on helping to bring down trees for technology that only lasts a few years.
Curious, I have books over a century old and in excellent condition. Those trees lasted more than a few years.
Perhaps you are referring to paperbacks, in which case, a Kindle is ideal. But for a real read of a book you enjoy, get a good hardbound book that uses quality paper.
Trees grow back… if replanted.
What I mean is that I don’t need to collect paper piles of Programming Language version 1, Programming Language version 2, Programming Language version 3, Programming Language version whatever.
Followed by OS version 1, OS version 2, OS version whatever
On top of Framework version 1, Framework v2, Framework version whatever
Edited 2014-12-20 07:02 UTC
Yeah, it’s hard to take this article seriously when Amazon has clearly been doing such a poor, even neglectful, job of improving the core experience. Font sizing, font choice, line spacing, justification, poor hyphenation, poor navigation controls on some of the device models, short shrift to illustrated (color or b/w, never mind interactive) material…
Pitching this as “the future” or “wild” when I didn’t come away with any clear and significant improvement to reading beyond the obvious — and with a considerable chunk of the entire piece just relating the past history of Audible which achieved the bulk of its success by being included in the iTunes Store and Amazon merely bought — while wholly neglecting the numerous areas where Kindle trails competitors and so obviously should be improving is sad.
Edited 2014-12-18 22:51 UTC
<Looks at his Paperwhite>
Help, my page turn buttons have been stolen!
Ah no, they were never there, which is pretty inconvenient.
I hope all this “research” convinces them to add them back to the touch screen readers?
Edited 2014-12-18 07:43 UTC
I don’t use a dedicated reader, I use my iPhone. Originally I read some books on my Newton, then I bought a Palm specifically to read ebooks ($20 on eBay, can’t go wrong). Now I use the iBook reader on my phone.
It really sort of redefines the book, in a way.
My current book I’m on page 1781 of 6119 pages.
Those numbers don’t mean a whole lot any more. It changes based on font size.
But it’s everywhere I go, which is handy. Text compresses nicely and, like music, we can carry tons of books with us.
Navigation is something to be desired. Browsing is mostly impossible. On a book you can literally thumb through the pages. Just grab a handful and start flicking and scanning. I can turn 10s of pages at a time if I like, I can turn partial pages, looking for diagrams, checking page numbers, etc.
But, i can’t search a book, I can hilight the book, but not, easily, index my notes without making the book a wad of sticky bits everywhere until theres as many sticky notes and pages, making the sticky notes less and less useful.
I have been purging books from my house. I can’t speak of how many boxes I’ve donated. You go through a move or a remodel and you have this huge box of books you never look at, but have collected over time. “Do I really want to unpack these again? Move them again?”. No, not really.
The loss of books, though, is a loss of discovery. There’s something about a friend coming over, browsing your shelf, sparking a conversation, and then you give them the book, sparking more conversations. Hard to do that with an iPhone.
So, it’s a mixed bag. We gain a lot of utility with eBooks, a lot of convenience, but we lose things as well.
I own quite a number of books which are or very soon will be a century old and more. Decorative covers, paper, text, illustrations and bindings still sound.
Time is what interests me.
Now and again I’ve discovered inserts — letters, bookmarks, news clippings, valentines and the like, things of no commercial value, but a unique connection to the past.
I have also a number of large format art press books and magazines from the mid 1950s and after. Uncompromising in their use of specialty papers, inks, typefaces and printing techniques.
The PDF is quite literally sterile and one-dimensional in comparison.
There can be more to the experience of reading a book than the Kindle can deliver.
After a full and fulfilling 95 years, by dad passed away in December, and since my mom preceded him by a few years, I’ve spent the remainder of this year sorting through the stuff in his house, particularly his library.
I found several of my mom’s nursing textbooks from the 1940s, his engineering textbooks from the 1930s, and many fascinating period books attempting to provide long-term perspective on World War II in the late 1940s (both served during the war – it’s how they met and when they married). I found books self-published by their friends, an array of novels both popular and obscure, some really interesting political polemics from the 1950s, and some interesting religious texts from the 1970s.
Inside the books, I found school crafts that my brother and I made during our formative years, letters and postcards from many of the “old” relatives I knew in my youth as “stodgy” but who were actually funny and active, and love letters my parents shared with no one.
I learned a lot about my parents a few years back,when I spent a couple of weeks one summer digitizing a huge number of photos from their life, adding notes of their memories. But I learned a great deal more in digging through their large collect of novels, non-fiction, and particularly old Bibles filled with highlighted church bulletins, newspaper clippings, school pictures of their friends’ children, and hand-written notes about things that were important to them across the years.
Books take up a LOT of space, as my own overstuffed study will attest. But they also provide unique insight into the character and meaning of the lives of those who collect them. While the advantages of ebook readers make them irresistible, I can’t help but feel we’re losing something important as “real” books fade slowly from the market and our lives.