10 Reasons Kindle Will Fail & Our Misguided Predictions - eBookNewser

10 Reasons Kindle Will Fail & Our Misguided Predictions - eBookNewser

1. It’s big and ugly – it’s no sleek iPhone

1. I wasn’t invited to the launch press and blogger meeting nor is the CN feed included in the device day 1.
2. $399 to have the privilege of then buying books to read on the device? Can I get a Fail Fail?
3. Isn’t reading about the enjoyment of reading?
4. So now I have to carry an iPod and a cell phone and a Kindle?
5. Notice the large laptop bag in the demo video? That’s because this guy has to carry his laptop, his cell phone, his iPod and now his kindle.
6. Be a big hit with the ladies when you whip out your Kindle. "Hey Baby, I read!"
7. It’s the Homer Car - hat tip to Dan Lewis
8. Can it do images or video? If not, how does it deal with books that have images or blogs that have videos? Is it Lynx all over again?
9. Who wants to pay for the Scoble feed? Only if it comes with the whiteboard sessions!

A blast from the past.

Reviews of the Kindle3 look promising

An early review of the K3 (video) | The Digital Reader

A nice walk-through and comparison to the Kindle2.

Amazon Kindle Third Generation With 3G/Wi-Fi | Wired.com Product Reviews

WIRED Amazon keeps pace with a more competitive e-reading marketplace with a smaller device, more readable text, yet and another improved hardware interface. $139 price for Wi-Fi version will open the door for multi-Kindle families. Battery life is long enough for space shuttle missions.

TIRED Still the same DRM, no touch-screen navigation, the book-light case is too costly. Only those with tiniest fingers will avoid hitting the "back" button when moving the cursor down. Interface for newspaper and magazines still clunky.

Amazon Sells more e-books than hardcovers for first time

The press release from Amazon is a little light on the hard data, but indications are that the e-book market is strong and getting stronger.

Besides e-books outpacing hardcovers the other thing that caught my eye was that five authors (Charlaine Harris, Stieg Larsson, Stephenie Meyer, James Patterson, and Nora Roberts) have sold more than 500,000 Kindle books. Something for the up-and-coming authors to aim for.

Amazon: Paper Books Are Dead, Or Something | Gizmodo
Amazon Sells More E-Books Than Hardcovers | Epicenter| Wired.com
Amazon's E-book Sales Tripled in First Half of 2010 | Publishers Weekly
Kindle Sales Triple; Amazon Selling More Kindle Books Than Hardcovers | The eBook Reader Blog

Augen The Book e-Reader - 7" Color LCD for $89

Nathan at The e-book Reader Blog picked one up at K-Mart for only $89US. Its being sold online (for pre-order in some cases) for $129. While it doesn't have a touchscreen it does have a full QWERTY keyboard.

7" Color Screen / 2GB Internal Memory / SD Slot / WiFi capable / Built-in Speaker / MP3 and Video Player / CPU: Ingenic 4755, Arm9 400 MHz / OS: Linux 2.6.24

I hope the K-Mart price drop leads to a quick drop on the gadget websites out there. With the Wi-fi web surfing this could be a great dual e-reader/web surfer.

Augen The Book e-Reader Video Review, First Impressions | The eBook Reader Blog

Kindle-Like LCD eReader: Augen “The Book” Available for Pre-Order | e-Bookvine

Amazon buys Woot.com then Sells 4,968 $149-Kindles in 9 Hours ($259 two weeks ago!)

Amazon Sells 4,968 Kindles in 9 Hours on Woot - mediabistro.com: eBookNewser:

"Amazon has sold out of Kindles on Woot!

This morning we reported that yesterday Amazon acquired Woot, an online vendor that only sells one item per day and along with it the company began offering a $149 Kindle--a dramatic drop from the already dramatically dropped price $189.

In nine hours, Amazon sold 4,968 Kindles. It's not surprising, when you consider that two weeks ago they cost $259 each. Wonder what Barnes & Noble plans to do about this. Check out all the stats below..."

I hope that the purchase of Woot by Amazon means that Woot will start accepting orders from Canada. Even though they do not ship to Canada I have gone back to the site again and again just to read the advertising copy. Its some of the funniest stuff out there. For example, today's Kindle sale was described thusly:

Step Into The Trunk Of My Car
Yeah, yeah, that’s the real price for a real Kindle. It’s not a typo or a knockoff or some Russian credit-card scam – just a Woot exclusive deal. But, y’know, hurry it up, willya?

We’re kind of, shall we say, operating in a grey area here so the quicker we get this deal done, the better for everybody, OK? No muss, no fuss, that’s what we always say. Well, when we’re not saying “What seems to be the trouble, officer?”

So yeah, a bonafide Amazon Kindle at a Woot-exclusive price, the iconic device that wrote the next chapter in the publishing story – listen, you want cheap puns or a cheap Kindle? We ain’t got all day here and we don’t like the look of that guy over there. How long has he been standing there? Is he watching us? OK, time to decide, pal.

Besides, there’s this bar we really need to get to. I don’t know about the drinks but they’ve got the best lost-and-found in town.

... and the sale of Woot to Amazon:

Amazon Buys World's Biggest Bag O' Crap, And It's Called Woot

Batten down your hatches and stock up on bottled water, because we're about to hit you with a category-5 newsicane: Woot has been acquired by Amazon! This partnership with the 800-lb. gorilla of ecommerce is huge news for us, but probably won't change

V Aliens Prefer Kindle - Kindle - Gizmodo

V Aliens Prefer Kindle - Kindle - Gizmodo

Hilarious. Sometimes product placement can be a chess game. And sometimes some doofus forgets to recharge the props on set.

Keep track of what Kindle users are highlighting

You can keep track of what Kindle users are highlighting at the Amazon site at http://kindle.amazon.com/popular_highlights.

Amazon organizes the data by all-time and heavily highlighted recently. All-time is self-explanatory, by the "recently" list is not explained in any detail on the site. Its probably because its still early days and they're being flexible with the number crunching until some some sort of pattern appears.

Most Highlighted of All Time

• Passages
• Books

Heavily Highlighted Recently

• Passages
• Books

Kindle's v2.5 firmware upgrade & social networking

Kindle's v2.5 firmware upgrade in May will introduce some interesting new features that may play a part in how we read books in the future.

• Share book passages with friends on Facebook and Twitter directly from your Kindle. 
• Popular Highlights: See what the Kindle community thinks are the most interesting passages in the books you're reading. 

Variations on the book club appear all over the web in various formats. I am impressed by very well written and thoroughly researched reviews, even if they sometimes go over my head. I'd like to write quality in-depth reviews myself but they are beyond my ability and the time I'm willing to put into it. The quality or applicability of comments/reviews found on Amazon, in chat rooms, newsgroups, or forums range from excellent to execrable.

When reading on my ebookwise I often highlight words I'm not familiar with (or misspelled words for that matter), as well as passages that are either very good or very bad. When I'm done with the book the markup is never used for anything -- yet I continue to do it.

I think Amazon may have hit upon something here, tapping a body of knowledge that is not yet represented on the web. Readers, for the most part, can't be bothered with writing a review or commenting on a book. If the reading process itself can be modified to make it easy to share your impressions as you are reading we get two benefits: the "raw data" of passages that readers find interesting, and the impetus for people to work up the energy to express their opinions about a book.

Hopefully, if the experiment works, we can see a future where all readers on all devices can share their interesting passages. If anything, it can be a valuable resource for finding the good bits of the next potboiler or bodice ripper you plan on reading.