Kindle is not so great Bezos
Just when Amazon announced their new Kindle with strong front page message from Jeff Bezos, and thought they are going to change the way people look at books with their product, soon the Kindle page got flooded with bad reviews that brought it to 2.5/5! A total of 558 reviews as of now. I remember seeing it the first day and I was excited to have one thing for all, looking at the size and posted weight. Yeah I’d buy it I thought. But then the number of bad reviews was so high I said to my self: “This is an old product then! Why the hell are they so happy about it now?” But soon after I realized its all new reviews, and many from people who did not even try it.
But looking at where people are coming from, they do have a point. Several points actually, and I will add one my self also:
- Price Tag: This might be something out of their hand, I’m not sure about it. But in the end, you as a consumer are paying $400 for a way to buy and read books. A single non-transferable way!
- As I said, it’s only one way of reading. Say it got stolen, broken, or it turns out to be a piece of crap after all. Or there is a new Apple reader in market and you are just crazy enough Apple fan that you have to buy and use it, or you will lose your privilege of being called Apple fanboy. Can you do that? No, not without losing all the books you bought, as all these contents are protected by DRM and are of specific Amazon file types that you cannot move around. Most you can hope for is Amazon will send you new similar copy only working on Kindle. And you will have to wish only Kindle doesn’t run out of business. And, sooner or later, this product will have to be replaced by superior one, only God knows if it will be backward compatible.
- You can’t lend it to someone else to read. Also, you can’t resell it.
- EDVO network: I am not sure how good and reliable is that but at least in Kuwait it’s not cheap at all.
- Listed Book Price: When you enter the market with yet to be adapted technology, and you are adding another variable to the formula with the DRM and content locking to your hardware, you have to be more persuading on the outcome of it. However what you see is that Amazon tries to show the difference between Kindle and List Price as something like $24.99-$9.99 = $15 saving, like The Almost Moon for example. However this ignores the fact that the selling price for the hard-cover book on Amazon is $13.73 only! Thus the saving is less than $4. I’d say it should be cheaper as all my contents there have no guarantee if being immortal. I could lose them all at once.
In the end, I’m just thinking. What if this same exact product had the name iBook (Trademark Jobs don’t steal it as you did with iPhone!). Do you think people’s opinion and reaction would be different? I’d say it must be out of stock already and 5/5 is just not enough for it :).
Popularity: 4% [?]
Most Popular Posts:
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Comments
Kroms: Hmmm… not sure how this is an advantage. As for the disadvantage, although the world of technology is pushing hard for ebooks, there is just something in real books that can’t be replaced with electronic copies. At least, not yet.
I thought of it as an iTunes listing. Like, writers of books who can’t get them published probably can NOW, with Kindle, or at least get exposure.
eBooks suck. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And frankly, books are soft on the eyes, they don’t have a power chord, they actually ARE good decoration, and holding the damn thing in your hand actually matters.
Kroms: Yeah it’s not like iTunes. Holding the book in hand really has a different feeling, but for separate articles you may find eBook reader useful when you are going out. But definitely not for that price :)
There is ONE advantage, and that’s because some publishers are really reluctant to publish different kinds of books (yes, yes, I know I bring that up a lot, but it’s annoying as hell).
Another disadvantage to Kindle: if I’m going to read at the end of the day, I really don’t want my eyes to be staring at a monitor, as there’s nothing more tiring.