The Reading Lover’s Approach to the Kindle

When I buy a good sized, brand new, paperback the first thing I like to do is to rifle through the pages just to get a taste of that new book smell. For me, there is nothing better then when the contraption of bound paper flaps its wings as I turn the pages and delve further and further into the protagonist’s journey. I begin to sadden as I notice how the amount of remaining pages is dwindling down. Well Amazon.com, a site that used to be a reader’s best friend in now trying to take this experience away.
Amazon is the brain child of Jeff Bezos, an ex-finance worker turn revolutionary book salesman, who wanted to create an online bookstore. This site became operational on July 1, 1995. For the next two years not only did it supply books for anxious and needy readers, but also contained suggested reads. Then, like all great businesses do, in ’98, Amazon extended to the sales of CDs and DVDs. Finally, in 2001, Amazon became the web site we have all learned to know, an “e-commerce infrastructure for use by third-party vendors,” as the Time Magazine describes it. Three years ago, in ’06, Amazon then took Apple’s iTunes store on as it offered music-and-video-downloading.
In these short fourteen years, Amazon has become the leader in book sales, owning around 43% of that industry.
Amazon.com is not only a website for the distribution of hard covered books, though. There is also a BurgeSurge feature which allows for a book’s ‘print on demand.’ And now Mr. Bezos has made a self publishing service called CreatSpace.
A survey done by the Jenkins Group reported that 80% of Americans wants to write and publish a book. And now with Amazon’s self-publishing, this past year, for the first time in history, there were more books self-published in the U.S. than in the regular way. Without the rigorous publication progress, many writers are leaving publishing agencies to get the books of a less than superb caliber.
Not only may Amazon be allowing the deterioration of writing level of modern books, but may also be making the end of books as we know it. Amazon has designed an electronic hand-held reading device compatible to the sites new e-books. The new Amazon Kindle is the company’s attempt to “introduce the next chapter in reading,” as its slogan proclaims, while perhaps it is the last.
The Kindle, a 10.2 ounce, pencil thick, hand-held reader can hold up to 1,500 books. This almost $350 piece of technology is connected to a 3G network and can upload a book from the online e-book store in a minute flat for the minimal price of $9.99. With this minimal price, many publishers fear for their jobs.
The reason why this writer thinks that Kindle might be the end of reading is due to its new handy feature, the ‘Read to Me’ application. This allows for any book to be instantly made an audio book, including newspapers, magazines and even blogs. Unless, of course, the book rights holder forbids it.
The Kindle’s critics complain that the lighting makes reading a digital screen difficult. But with the improved, Kindle DX on it way, with the ability hold an additional 2,000 books, the critics are being blinded by promising modern technology. They are missing the possibility of the downfall of books.
Although digitizing a book in itself is not threatening, the fact that it comes with a ‘Read to Me’ feature is. Not only is there an increasingly lessening writer’s standard due to self-publishing, we have eliminated the fresh book feeling and worse of all the need to even read at all. This may seem unrealistic, but e-books’ prices are unbeatable. “Who wouldn’t like a price that was significantly lower than the price of the hard cover,” said Carolyn Reider, president and CEO of the Simon & Schuster publishing agency.
On the bright side of things, however, while this distopian picture I have just drawn is far off in the future, until then there may be the greatest insurgence of reading the world has ever seen with many more titles being cheaper and easily accessible. But with the starting price of almost four hundred dollars, considering the economy and the future of reading, is it really worth it?