Three reasons I won’t buy a Kindle. Yet.
Posted by John in General, Howto, Pop Culture, TechOK, so Apple’s iPad and upcoming foray into eBooks aside, let’s consider the Kindle. I’m an avid reader. I read practically anything, fiction and non-fiction both. I read just for fun…not just for school or for work. I’m also a published author. In short, I love books.
However, there are three reasons I won’t buy a Kindle. Or even any other eBook reader.
Reason #1: I have thousands of dollars invested in printed books. Some I no longer read, others I keep around for nostalgia and glance at occasionally, and others I refer to frequently. There is no way to convert this significant investment in printed books into some sort of eBook format. I feel this is a key flaw in the eBook business model which touts convenience. Sure, it is convenient, but only for books you buy after you buy the reader. For the thousands of dollars you already have invested, tough. What are your options then? Recycling? Sharing or trading? The point of a book is to have access to knowledge. Either you keep the physical copy around so you have it for later, or you get rid of it. If you get rid of it, you “lose” that knowledge.
Reason #2: There’s no option to get a book’s Kindle version later, for a discounted (or even free) price. Let’s say I want to buy a book, but the publisher hasn’t released it for the Kindle yet. No problem…as I pointed out above, if it is a book I want, I have no problem buying the hard copy, reading it, and storing it on my shelf. However, I’d probably be a lot more inclined to buy the book in the first place, especially for those books that are more “that sounds like a good read” vs. “I definitely want to read this” books, if I was offered a future Kindle version for a discounted price or better yet, free. Something like “Not available on Kindle, but buy now for $14.99 and we’ll ship if for free and when it does become available on the Kindle, you’ll get the Kindle version for just $1.99.”
Reason #3: This is more of a deficiency in Amazon’s web site than a problem with the Kindle. I have a fairly sizable wishlist with books as the overwhelming majority of items. Scrolling through my wish list, there’s absolutely no indication whatsoever whether any of the books are available on the Kindle. Why not? If I was looking through my wish list, and saw that 60% of the books were available on the Kindle, I might seriously consider buying one and getting the books that way. Further, there should be options on my wish list, like “Purchase all books from your wish list that are available on Kindle”. It is this type of library management that Amazon is lacking. Something like iTunes gets it, though. I can log in, and iTunes will tell me that X number of songs I purchased earlier are available at a higher bit rate and without DRM, with a “one-click” option to upgrade all of them. I don’t see this at Amazon.
The Kindle is a great idea. It just seems to me that Amazon is seriously missing some opportunities for better marketing tie-ins and web site integration with the product.
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1. So you have old books. Good for you. Keep them. They are like furniture now. They look nice. Big thick laptops were nice too, but now we have smaller ones.
2. Maybe they should imprint a code in books so you could redeem them using a coupon-code sort of thing. Folks would probably grip those codes from bookstores, but maybe there’d be a new invention for this. Still not a reason NOT to buy a Kindle.
3. Amazon’s store didn’t start out selling digital media the way the iTunes store did. Give them some time. Maybe the iPad will push them towards this.
I’m just saying, I think Amazon is missing some key ways to increase sales. Though maybe they don’t care since the Kindle is selling so well. I will probably buy an iPad for my Dad.
I’ll probably buy an iPad because it looks cool as hell. Probably works great, too.