Amazon’s Portable E-Book Reader: Print Media is Under Seige (Old News)

Amazon is currently amidst the launch of their new e-book reader, The Kindle, and Newsweek featured an extensive article, “The Future of Reading,” on the device, its book purchasing and internet service, and many of the implications for publishers, writers, readers, distributors, etc. etc. etc. I could speculate on The Kindle endlessly, but when it comes down to it, according to the article, the device will be shipping out soon, yet Amazon hasn’t released any videos of the Kindle in action. Judging from the news that the Kindle has a black and white screen which is only six inches, the books via Amazon’s service will cost $9.99, and their biggest one-up on other e-book readers is wireless connectivity, I’d guess that, though this is a step forward for e-books in the long-form read format, the Kindle isn’t going to revolutionize the reading world the way the iPod did with the listening world. At least not yet.

There are many attractive features of current e-book readers, despite the fact that they have a long way to go. “E-book devices like the Kindle allow you to change the font size: aging baby boomers will appreciate that every book can instantly be a large-type edition. The handheld device can also hold several shelves’ worth of books: 200 of them onboard, hundreds more on a memory card and a limitless amount in virtual library stacks maintained by Amazon. Also, the Kindle allows you to search within the book for a phrase or name.”

At $400 dollars though, and without a larger full-color screen, I don’t see portable e-book readers taking off just yet. And more generally, having a designated e-book reader just doesn’t seem practical when laptops keep getting smaller and cheaper and phones continue to get larger and more web-ready and computer-like. When hard drive technology improves every day and one inch flash drives can store more files than mainframe computers that once filled entire rooms, having a drive on a device exclusively dedicated to e-books seems like the pipe dream of a company that has succeeded in the book market, not the technology market. I love e-books, and I know that one day my physical library of books will become artifacts, but I just don’t envision e-books as something that should be limited in the way that Amazon envisions them.

E-books, not the portable reading devices, have vast implications for education. The possibilities for ease of access, searchability, organization and archiving, digitally organized annotations, and socially networked reading are huge upsides, but until e-book formats and computer/phone/device readers get better and significantly cheaper than acquiring print texts in schools, they aren’t going to become mainstream. There are also copyright issues with e-books. We all know that teachers are notorious for copying short stories, essays, poems, maybe even whole books when they can’t acquire copies for all of their students. With computers or smaller e-book devices, it will only be easier for teachers to pirate complete texts amongst themselves and their students. People tend to not think of digital file-sharing as criminal activity and feel anonymous and guilt-free, but in an age when the death of the novel is being talked about seriously and the death of the career poet happened long ago, royalties for great writers are crucial. Unlike musicians who can make a living off performing live, novelists require a certain amount of isolation. The status of the novelist has already diminished so much in our culture, but there is still a loyal market of consumers that makes deep connections to the physical texts which seem impregnable. We’ve already seen the way that the internet has changed the music industry. The major labels are suffering because the market has been flattened and people have more choice. I suppose this can be seen as a positive in the book world as well. Authors will get more exposure via digital book networks, but the major writers will bring in less money in royalties. There are upsides and downsides, and as much as I love my paperbacks and don’t want the book world to change, the shift is inevitable.