If you haven’t heard already, amazon.com has lofty goals for its electronic reader, the Kindle. With a sleek, white design and a simple interface, the people behind the Kindle are hoping to revolutionize the way we read books and newspapers in the same way that the iPod revolutionized the music world. To many, this is the future of reading, the epitome of simplicity in an e-reader.
However, don’t expect the revolution to come any time soon. Curiously, this device is lacking a lot of key features, like a backlight, a color display and a smooth, well crafted voice reader system. For a machine that costs a hefty $359, most people certainly aren’t willing to splurge on a half-baked electronic reader.
The Kindle’s biggest feature is obviously its online library. At the time of writing this, the Kindle library contains 299,952 books available for immediate download. Every day, this library expands by an estimated 500 books, giving customers more variety to choose from. However, with an approximated ownership of 1/10 of 1% of the American population, the Kindle isn’t catching on like wildfire. That is, not yet.
The Kindle is now planning on releasing textbooks through its online library, hoping to tap into the valuable college market. In Amazon’s perfect world, the Kindle will replace physical books in just a few years. Instead of lugging around bulky textbooks, college students can carry their textbooks in a slim machine. Instead of having bookcases filled with yellowing pages and stiffening spines, we could keep our Kindles on our nightstands. After all, books deteriorate. Kindles don’t.
There’s also the idea that buying a Kindle will ultimately save you money due to the reduced book costs. Never mind that one would need to purchase about 50 books before the Kindle becomes a profitable investment. Amazon insists that this is the future of print media and we would be better jumping on the bandwagon now than be left behind.
The Kindle does open up many possibilities within the print media realm. There’s been talk that the Kindle could revive the dying newspaper industry by providing up-to-date, paperless subscriptions to the world’s most famous newspapers, giving people the impetus to begin reading the daily morning paper once again.
With all the possible benefits that come with the Kindle, there’s an interesting problem that’s just beneath the surface. Most books through Kindle’s online library are priced at a reasonable $9.99. While this is great for consumers, book authors will find it increasingly difficult to make a living off writing in a Kindle based world. You see, book authors get most of their income from royalties that are partly paid up front. Publishers attempt to determine how many copies a certain book will sell, and then they determine the amount of the royalty based on that number. Once the target sales goal is reached, the authors are then paid roughly 15% of the cover price of each book sold after that. However, in a Kindle world, this model would change. It is speculated that authors would simply receive 10-25% of online sales. Once one does the math, it becomes evident that an author would have to sell many more Kindle books to make the same profit as he or she would off of a hardcover sale. Essentially, the Kindle would economically harm authors, forcing them to take lower profits simply by selling their books’ rights to the Kindle library. If the world of print media goes the way of the Kindle, then it would be much harder for authors to make a living off of writing. This in turn would discourage more and more people from writing, effectively hurting the quality and quantity of books being released to the marketplace.
The Kindle offers a convenient alternative for consumers. However, the Kindle system ultimately hurts the authors that allow for the existence of the Kindle in the first place. As we go into an increasingly technological world, I personally hope that the Kindle doesn’t become the next big thing. Besides enjoying the experience of reading a hardcover book and the feeling of ink on paper, I can’t help but worry that the Kindle could do more harm than good. For now, we don’t have to worry; price and design issues are preventing the mainstream acceptance of this electronic reader. But, sometime in the near future, it is quite possible that we could see the widespread dissemination of the Kindle. If that’s the case, count me out. I’ll be sitting in the corners of Barnes and Noble, reading my choice stories from a bounded book.
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