Kindle -a bit of a review

I've had a Kindle for about 3 months now and having heard that it is now outselling physical books on Amazon, it seems that reflecting a bit on my own use and thoughts might be timely.

I bought the thing for a handful of reasons. One was that when I hold books -especially thick ones- for any length of time to read them (you know, holding the pages open and keeping the weight of it at the right height etc) I am starting to get into various RSI issues: wrists, fingers, neck. So having something light without pages has definite advantages. Secondly, the e-ink thing is a bonus: luminous screen reading is tiring in comparison with reflected-light reading, so again e-readers with e-ink score well for me (it's me age). Then is the scholarly application: you can underline passages and these are synced with your account and you can then go to the appropriate page on the web and grab the quotes you might want to use. Similarly, the note-making facility, backs up your thoughts, observations and critiques on the way through the book also to be grabbable from your machine's account. In addition the ability in most cases to change the format and size of the type-face means that I can allow for different lighting conditions and even my own tiredness by increasing the font size and shape. The smaller sizes are fine for bright environments when I'm not tired -it means less battery used because I change page less often. Though given that the battery can last for several weeks that may not be a huge consideration. (E-ink only uses power to change the display).

'But I love the paper, the smell ... [the romance ... the fetishisation ....]'. Yes, yes, I know: I like the book as an artefact myself and imagine that I will continue to enjoy owning them. However, I do like the fact that I can carry a whole load of stuff with me and put it in my coat pocket -even with a protective cover on my Kindle fits in the inside pocket of my coats and the outside pockets too. So easy and it means that I can easily have a read while on the bus or even standing in a queue. Also the aforementioned advantages of reading with less tiring and physical fatigue has become quite significant to me.

So, I don't imagine I'll give up my Kindle and I hope that it will continue to expand the amount of books available. Also the Kindle will read pdf's and various other word-processed formats and there are 'papers and magazines being published in the format.

That last remark points to one of the downsides: not every book is available as an e-book. Now, I suspect that this will change over the next few years, especially as publishers begin to realise just how much potential market there is out there.

The other downside, though far more minor, is that there are two competing e-book standards and they won't read each other. However, it is really easy for a book to be published in both formats and I suspect that they will be increasingly in the coming handful of years. This won't be quite as bad as VHS vs Betamax. The other interesting thing is that it is so easy to publish, a fact that will in time, I think, begin to reshape the way that publishing works for authors and the relationship between authors, editors and audiences.

The other thing that will need developing is the ability to lend your copy to someone for longer than two weeks and eventually the ability to sell your copy on as a second hand copy -if the DRM system they use is meant to make the e-book rather like a physical book in terms of singularity and un-copyability, then we should have the right and mechanism to dispose of the book for a sum -or even give it away to a charity. I can't see why this shouldn't happen, I imagine it's about no-one having really given it much thought yet -but maybe there's some reason beyond the obvious?

The other thing is about cost. Actually this is a couple of things: one is VAT in the UK; paper-books are exempt, e-books aren't. They really ought to tidy that up, preferably to remove VAT from e-books. The other is the way that publishers are ripping us off. Really, not all of them all of the time. And I'm quite content that they should make money to pay wages and salaries and to offset costs. But hang on; the costs of an e-book must surely be significantly less. I can't really see why some academic books are being sold at £50 plus as ordinary books, but even worse to have e-books not significantly different in price ... that's 'you're avin a giraffe' territory. Especially when some publishers are clearly not doing the bits of extra formatting work that is needed to make e-books really zing.

So what do publishers and writers need to ensure for a good e-book experience? Well, in a word, hyperlinking (and Kindle books are actually DRM-souped up HTML documents). In particular, contents pages (placed literally at the beginning so that they are easy to navigate back to) to chapters and preferably subheadings to aid rapid navigation. Also making sure that footnotes really do work so you can click back and forth: it is tiresome to have to remember the location numbers and manually put them in to go back and forth.

I'm confident that these are all things that will become the norm, but I'm putting them down here as a kind of plea to publishers and writers to make sure it's done. I'm thinking that I may be in touch with some publishers to tell them one or two of these things and suggest that they have sold inferior goods where these features are not in place.

Kindle Wireless Reading Device, Wi-Fi, Graphite, 6" Display with New E Ink Pearl Technology: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store