Brown Book Loft Blog

E-books and e-book readers are a relatively new development. However, the book buying public seems to have grown accustomed to e-books very quickly. Much of the credit for that must surely be given to the Amazon Kindle reader – in particular the Kindle 2.0 which hit the market in February of 2009. The third generation Kindle was released in August of 2010 and, despite prophecies of doom for the Kindle following the release of the Apple iPad, is selling faster than ever. There can’t be much doubt that it was the Kindle 2.0 that really helped e-books to take off.

Another key factor was the large number of Kindle books on offer. Amazon has always been ahead of the chasing pack in terms of the number of titles on offer. At the moment they have more 750,000 Kindle books available on their website – and those are just the paid titles. There are also an additional 1.8 million titles which are out of copyright and are now available for download free of charge.

However, although the public seems to have accepted e-books, it’s debatable if the same can be said for many of the big publishing firms. E-books have completely revised the long established publishing cycle. It’s not just that e-books are cheaper than printed books (since they consume no paper, ink or bindings) – there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be on sale simultaneously with the hardback edition. No need to wait for the paperback, the e-book version is immediately available from day one.

Clearly, the availability of a cheaper version alongside the hardback is something which could have an impact upon the sales of hardbacks. At the moment, Amazon are shipping 180 e-books for every 100 hardbacks that they sell. This seems to have created quite a stir for many of the major publishing houses. They have already had several run ins with Amazon over the pricing of e-books.

Publishers like Penguin, Hachette and Harper Collins recently switched to the “agency model” for their e-books. What this means is that the publishers set the price rather than the retailer (Amazon). This has generated elevated prices for some e-books – with some of them actually costing more than the printed version.

Kindle owners rapidly retaliated by awarding “one star” reviews to books where they felt that the Kindle book price was excessively high. Some fairly critical comments were left on Amazon’s website – aimed at the publishers for the most part – some went so far as to suggest that potential customers boycott both the Kindle and the hardback versions until prices are set at more reasonable levels. There have already been some price reductions.

The adoption of such a profit oriented approach seems to be more than a little short sighted on the part of the publishers. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to assume that e-book readers owners read a good number of books. People who read a book a month or so are unlikely to buy an e-book reader wouldn’t you think? In other words, e-book reader owners are the target market for the major publishing houses.

It seems obvious – just even – that e-books should cost less than traditional books. Apart from the lack of paper, ink and bindings, they have no delivery fees associated with them. They are also more environmentally friendly – even when the materials used in the e-book readers themselves are taken into consideration. It seems probable that e-book reader owners would not only be able to work this out for themselves but would, quite justifiably, anticipate that the price would reflect this.

Whilst it’s not out of the question that the publisher’s tactics may help to maintain their profits in the short term, they run the risk of antagonising their best customers by adopting this approach. Artificial price fixing is likely to antagonise the buying public and, after a series of one star reviews and public calls for boycotts, authors would most likely also be discontented. Publishers have just as much to gain from the e-book revolution as the public. The savings apply on both sides of the fence, publishers save money – which should be passed on to the public. If publishers can adapt to e-books, in the same way that readers have, they may continue to thrive. On the other hand, if their desire for short term profits inures them to the possible opportunities offered by this new medium, they will be rejected by both their authors and their readers.

Learn more about the Amazon Kindle for yourself and view the wide range of Kindle accessories available to help you personalise your reader.

Amazon’s recently upgraded Kindle 3 reader is selling like hot cakes. According to Amazon, it is selling faster than any previous edition of Kindle did in the equivalent post launch period. It’s a very different scenario to the death of the Kindle which was widely forecast in the wake of the Apple iPad’s release.

In spite of all the hype surrounding the iPad, and despite the criticism about the lack of a color screen, the inability to play video and a web browser which is basic at best, Amazon has tenaciously maintained its position that the Kindle is a specialist device which is intended to be used primarily as an e-book reader. The result of this is that the Kindle reader is, by some distance,currently the best and most popular e-book reader available on the market.

The latest third generation Kindle features a host of improvements and upgrades. However, it’s clear that these are all intended to improve the performance of the Kindle as an e-book reader rather than to introduce new functions in different areas which might make the device more multi-functional.

One of the most critical characteristics for any e-book reader is the display. The already excellent e-ink technology display has had its contrast increased by 50%. This means that it is even better to read on. The display remains the same size at 6″ across the diagonal – but the overall size and weight of the Kindle has been reduced.

In addition to the size and weight reduction, modifications to the QWERTY keyboard – it now has four rows of keys instead of five – the use of smaller page turn buttons, and the repositioning of the D-pad switch, make the Kindle even easier to use with only one hand than ever. Navigating on the new Kindle is very easy indeed.

The battery life has also been extended. Up to a month between charges is now possible with the Wi-Fi switched off. Memory storage is doubled from 2GB to 4GB. That’s sufficient for up to 3,500 books.

One of the biggest innovations has to be the introduction of a Wi-Fi only model priced at only $ 139. This is perfect for someone who doesn’t have any requirement for 3G connectivity. The Wi-Fi plus 3G model is on sale for $ 189. Which one you choose will depend upon your own individual needs – but the fact that both have lifetime internet access included in the purchase price, and that there are no monthly fees, remains a big advantage for the Kindle.

Although the Kindle success story looks pretty much unstoppable right now, Amazon are not getting complacent about its ongoing development. They are actively researching color e-ink technology screens, investigating the option for touch screens that maintain the readability of the current e-ink technology and looking into ever faster refresh rates for their displays. It’s even rumoured that they might be thinking about developing other personal electronic items. Amazon is certainly not resting on its laurels.

However, it seems clear that any new technology will be introduced only when it is fully developed and at a stage where it will enhance the end user experience. Amazon are not about to release a color screen just because the iPad has one, or a touch screen simply because Sony’s reader has one. They seem determined to make their top selling e-book reader the very best – of its kind – on the market. It’s a strategy that seems to be working be very well for them.

Learn more about the Amazon Kindle for yourself and view the wide range of Kindle accessories available to help you personalise your reader.

The Amazon Kindle reader has been a tremendous success for Amazon since it was first introduced in November of 2007. The updated Kindle 2.0, released in February 2009 was a huge influence in the rapid growth and development of the e-book reader market and the new Kindle 3 reader, unveiled at the end of July 2010, has been selling like hot cakes.

Amazon have advised that the new Kindle 3 has been selling faster than any earlier Kindle did during the equivalent post launch time slot. It’s a very different scenario to the widely forecast demise of the Kindle that a lot of industry analysts anticipated in the wake of Apple’s iPad launch.

In a way, it’s a compliment to the Kindle that, up until now at least, its only real competition comes in the form of a versatile tablet computer which costs over three times the price of the Kindle. It seems reasonable to assume that, were Amazon to treble the Kindle price, some extra features could be added.

However, that seems to be an unlikely course of events. The Kindle is a specialist, intended to be the best e-book reader available on the market. The iPad is specifically designed to be a multi-functional device. They are two very different pieces of kit aimed at different market sectors. A side by side technical comparison is likely to be a fruitless endeavour.

Even so, it’s interesting to see that there are now games being made available for the Kindle. Obviously the iPad is the clear winner when it comes to playing games – the Kindle’s screen, whilst ideal as an e-book reader, is not suitable for anything which requires a fast refresh rate.

So it should be no surprise that the types of games being made available for the Kindle are mainly number games and word puzzles. Currently, the most popular Kindle game is the classic Scrabble. Other choices include crosswords, Sudoku, solitaire and general word puzzles. We’re not talking about Grand Theft Auto or Halo Reach here – but, without wanting to stereotype, it makes perfect sense that someone who reads a lot might also enjoy doing crosswords and solving word puzzles.

Currently, Scrabble for the Kindle is available for $ 4.99 and is the top selling Kindle game. There are other games available in the price range of $ 0.99 to $ 4.99. There are even some free games being released, a trend which – if Kindle games follow the same pattern as Kindle books – will probably increase in the near future.

Learn more about the Amazon Kindle reader for yourself and view the wide range of Kindle accessories available to help you personalise your reader.

Amazon unveiled its upgraded third generation Kindle reader at the end of July. It’s been selling like hot cakes ever since and Amazon has, for what seems like the umpteenth time, run out of stocks again. It hardly matches the post iPad launch predictions which anticipated the demise of the Kindle.

There’s little doubt that the iPad has the Kindle well beaten in a number of different areas. Colour screen, touch screen, better web browsing, ability to play video, ability to play games – the list is long, and it goes on. Which is not all that surprising when you consider that the price of even the entry level iPad is more than three times that of the Kindle base model.

Nevertheless, the Kindle reader gets the better of the iPad in most of the areas that anyone whose main interest is reading books would consider to be important. The e-ink technology display may be black and white, and it may not handle video, but it does allow the Kindle to last for as much as four weeks between charges. Whilst the iPad’s colour screen may be a thing of beauty, it is power hungry and you’ll be lucky to last for more than ten hours between charges. The Kindle is smaller and lighter than the iPad and, as Amazon has pointed out in recent television adverts, it has a screen which is much more readable – even in bright sunlight. As already mentioned, the entry level Kindle price of $ 139 is well below the base iPad price of $489 – and with no monthly fees to pay either.

However, even all that does not fully explain the advantages enjoyed by the Kindle. Considering the hardware in isolation, whilst quite a natural thing to do, is to miss the point when considering e-book readers – and the e-books which they will be used to read. You could argue that Sony’s PRS reader, which was released in 2006, was somewhat superior to the original Amazon Kindle which was released in November of 2007. However, the Kindle fairly quickly established itself as the market leader simply because it was much easier to buy Kindle books for it than it was to get books for the Sony reader. It wasn’t just that Amazon had a huge range of Kindle books on their website for customers to choose from, but buying them and getting them delivered was a very quick and easy process.

As the market matures, the sale of e-books will become much more important than the sale of the e-book reader hardware. Amazon is perfectly positioned to reap the benefits of ongoing e-book sales. They could even choose to use these to subsidise the cost of their reader hardware if they wanted to.

Amazon has given a strong signal as to how they see the market developing in future by releasing a number of free apps which allow Kindle books to be read on a wide variety of other devices – including the PC, the Mac, the Blackberry smart phone, any device running Android and even the iPhone and the iPad. Whilst this may seem like they are pulling the rug from under their own top selling product, each of these apps is effectively an additional retail outlet for Kindle books – where the big money will be made in future.

It seems to be a winning strategy. Today, Kindle books account for somewhere between 60 and 80 percent of the US e-book market. As the market develops and matures, it seems likely that Amazon’s share of it will reduce a little – but it looks like they will continue to be one of the biggest influences in this market for the foreseeable future

Check out the Amazon Kindle for yourself and view the wide range of Kindle accessories available to help you personalise your reader.

The popularity of e-book readers has been increasing for some time now. It’s probably not unreasonable to say that the Amazon Kindle reader has been a key factor in the growth of the market for e-book readers. Whilst the Kindle wasn’t first to market when it originally launched in November of 2007, it was a significant improvement on other readers available on the market.

Amazon made excellent use of customer feedback and firmly established its dominant market position with the release of the Kindle 2.0 in February of 2009. In the summer of the same year, Amazon followed up with the Kindle DX and August 2010 saw Amazon unveil its third generation Kindle reader.

The Kindle is Amazon’s top selling product. Amazon recently advised that they are selling more Kindle books than hardback books – 180 Kindle books for every 100 hardcovers. It can only be a matter of time before Kindle books start outselling paperbacks – and they will eventually outsell both paperbacks and hardbacks combined.

There can’t be much doubt that e-book readers and e-books are now a permanent feature of the publishing world. The future of reading appears to be digital. A lot of book lovers will, quite understandably, have an attachment to physical books. Many wonder whether or not an e-book reader is right for them. Some worry that they may miss the feel, and even the smell, of a “real” book. Others wonder if they will enjoy reading on an e-ink display, or if the page turns will spoil their enjoyment.

Making a judgement can be difficult. It may soon be available in selected retails stores but, for the moment, the main outlet for the Amazon Kindle is online, so – unless you know someone who owns one – it can be hard to see it working in order to form an opinion. You can find any number of reviews on the internet – but many of these seem to be chiefly concerned with the technical aspects rather than the user experience. Most first time buyers will be more interested to know how an e-book reader compares to reading a traditional book than how it compares to other available e-book readers.

So, if you’re wondering whether or not an e-book reader would be right for you, here are a few points to consider

1. The Kindle’s e-ink display is a lot better to read on than a back-lit computer screen. It really is just like reading printed paper text – albeit the background is light grey instead of white.

2. The e-ink technology display is very much better to read on than a back-lit computer screen. It’s just like reading text printed on paper – but with a light grey background as opposed to white.

3. The Amazon Kindle store has over 670,000 titles on offer for you to choose from. There are also over 1.8 million out of copyright Kindle books available for free. If you read one book each week. you could recover the cost of your reader in just a few months.

4. During page turns, there is a slight flicker. The screen goes blank for an instant. However, this really is very fast and – after you’ve been using your reader for a couple of hours – you won’t even notice this.

5. E-books cost less than printed books – due to the fact that they use no paper, ink or bindings. They also don’t need to be delivered by road transport.

6. Amazon’s Kindle store has in excess of 670,000 titles available for you to select from. There are also more than 1.8 million out of copyright Kindle books available for free download. If you read a book a week. your reader could finance itself in no more than a few months.

7. A battery life of three to four weeks is achievable – with the Wi-Fi turned off.

8. Downloading Kindle books is fast and simple. It really does take less than a minute. What’s more, as long as you are in an area with coverage (most of the civilized world these days) you can buy a new book any time, day or night. You’ll never be stuck without something to read again.

9. You will be able to take a small library of books with you wherever you go. It’s ideal if you travel frequently.

10. You can carry your own personal library with you wherever you go. It’s great if you travel a lot.

A survey of e-book readers in the USA found that 80% of them preferred reading e-books to reading conventional books. Considering the list of benefits above, it’s no great surprise. If you are a book lover, then the Amazon Kindle reader may be the ideal device for you.

Check out the Amazon Kindle for yourself and view the wide range of Kindle accessories available to help you personalise your reader.