I've always been a huge fan of Jeff Bezos. He has a vision for his company and what he wants to bring to the world and he does his thing. Today Amazon is an Internet giant, but early on its eventual success and very survival were often debated. Articles like this, this and this were common. I was very excited about the Internet, and Bezos was just such an optimist regardless of how much money they were loosing, how can you not root for a guy like that?
People continued to doubt Jeff Bezos even after Amazon has firmly established itself as the eCommerce leader as well as a leader in Cloud Computing. The Kindle is dead, they said. With the iPad the world had it's first full blown tablet. Bye bye Kindle. Yet, the Kindle has continued to be Amazon's best selling product and the 3rd generation model became the company's best selling product in history. Why?
I've always been an avid reader and read several dozen books every year. I consider books an AMAZING gift from the author - to sit down and spend an hour with Don Tapscott, Marc Benioff, Dale Carnegie, Peter Drucker, Seth Godin, Malcolm Gladwell, Jim Collins, Michael Porter, Guy Kawasaki, The Dalai Lama - I mean how awesome is that! Hours of teachings from the world's greatest teachers are often available for less than the cost of a salad at an organic grocery store. These authors are the main reason I write this blog. I felt guilty for taking so much but not trying to give back anything. If one sentence on this blog adds any value, regardless of how trivial, to someone's day, well then I've given something back. I love books and was excited to check out the Kindle. It took me about 10 minutes to decide I was in love. Why?
E Ink
I don't know how they did it, but I'm glad they did. Reading a Kindle is exactly like reading from the page of a traditional book. This is not an exaggeration. Avid readers will recognize this look immediately. Reading from a computer screen and reading from a book are very different experiences - when you read from a Kindle, you're reading from a book. When Bezos and team say the Kindle is in a different product category than an iPad this is what they're referring to. The Kindle is a reader.
All my authors come with me!
As an avid reader I'm usually working on several books at a time. I might be in the mood for one or the other or simply get board with one and switch it up. This means I have tons of books and often travel with several. Not a huge deal but books are heavy and I usually wouldn't take more than 2 - limiting my options. Shelf space was also a constant battle requiring a periodic offloading of books I knew I didn't want. Now my library lives in the Cloud. I can keep any books I want on the Kindle and keep them online as well. This has another added advantage as the Kindle app for Android (I have a Nexus One) and OS X (MacBook Pro) is free. Before I had a Kindle I had a couple of Kindle books I'd read on my phone when I was stuck in a long line or a waiting room. Ironically, one of these books is The Long Tail by Wired.com's editor-in-chief. I was sitting at the DMV when I read several paragraphs discussing the possibility of on-demand book production which would allow more diversity as it removes the large capital expense of printing hundreds or thousands of books on commercial printing presses - it wasn't economical to run one of these huge presses to print off a couple of copies. The holy grail of course was the "digital book" which would completely remove the costs of physical storage, printing and shipping. I will never forget reading those paragraphs on a phone at the DMV. As a child I had a set of encyclopedias as my best source of information - now I had any book I wanted. The digital book has arrived. It seems like such a given now but these paragraphs written just a few years ago highlight how far we've come.
Comfort
Before I received my Kindle I had often thought about buying one myself. One thing I thought I'd really miss was holding and flipping through an actual book. I don't. I prefer reading on the Kindle. The Kindle is easier to hold and "flip" pages. I have the 3rd generation device, previous versions were a bit bulkier. I do much less repositioning and adjustment of both my hands and what I'm reading. I still love "real" books but my Kindle books have become just as real and I find myself wishing I could somehow smash my physical books into the device.
Kindle-ish stuff
On the Kindle you can put a cursor in front of a word and a dictionary pulls up the meaning. Very cool. Most of the time this "cursor" is no where to be seen, it only comes up at your request. This feature has been very helpful. Need to search the web? No problem. The Kindle has a browser so you can check out Google.com or Wikipedia. Again, the Kindle is a reader so you won't be checking your Gmail but for simple searches this can be very handy. You can also do things like highlight sections and make your own notes. One way I often discover new authors is when they're mentioned by the author I'm currently reading - I can make a quick note of this so I don't forget. Every Amazon book with a Kindle edition is available in a matter of seconds. You can also check out samples of books you're thinking about buying. The battery life on the Kindle is crazy. E Ink doesn't require any power to hold it's shape - you only use power when you flip the page. This gives the device a battery life of like a month.
The dedicated reader isn't going anywhere. Amazon nailed it. Judging by their progress in 3 versions I imagine the Kindle will continue to improve. I can't imagine too many ways it could, but that's why we have Jeff Bezos and team. Thanks Amazon!
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