Last week my Kindle 2 e-reader from Amazon arrived. I swore to my brother a couple of years ago I’d never buy 1.0 of anything ever again — and I’m glad I waited. I played briefly with a friend’s first-edition Kindle last year and was intrigued. The new version has a better display, better form factor and better usability.
This device is far from perfect, but it’s impressive. It’s pricey ($359) — but I still think even the most cash-strapped newsroom should acquire one and make it available so journalists, editors, designers and news technologists can play with it. If you can’t or won’t buy one and you’re in the online news biz, buy a Kindle 2 owner a beer and play with the Kindle for an hour or two at least.
Why? Because I seriously suspect devices like this could become game-changers for online and mobile news — perhaps surprisingly fast. That is, if online news operations start taking e-reader technology seriously and work with Amazon and other companies to improve e-reader news delivery. We still have a way to go, but there’s potential.
Currently, Kindle is mainly intended for reading books. But Amazon has always sold newspapers and magazines (one-offs and subscriptions) since it launched the Kindle Store. Yes, that’s right: sold. As in: revenue.
This week I bought a couple of issues of Technology Review, and I even subscribed to the San Francisco Chronicle. (Yep, subscribed. Paid for it. Me. $5.99 per month. Imagine that.) I like getting news like this via Kindle, but there are some glitches.
My observations so far:
1. Kindle Store needs more news providers. Currently just under 100 newspapers and under 50 magazines and journals are available in Kindle format. As far as I can tell, that’s up even from last week. If your news isn’t in the Kindle Store yet, check into this option. If it isn’t too hard to do and the business deal is acceptable (see point five below), this might be free money. (I’d love to hear from Tidbits readers about what’s involved in creating and distributing a Kindle version of a publication.)
2. Kindle news navigation needs improvement. Right now, when I go to the home page of a newspaper or magazine on my Kindle, I’m presented with the main story and a small “section list” navigation item at the bottom. When I click on that, I see a list of sections: just sections. This isn’t very helpful because I then must choose a section and click through the stories one by one.
Is it possible to present a home page that has a Google-News-style list of headlines and blurbs that I can quickly scan (and possibly customize)? Once I choose a story of interest, I’d then like to see the full Kindle layout — which is pretty nice, I think.
I don’t know if this navigation obstacle is a function of how the Kindle works, or how news organizations are packaging and delivering content for Kindle distribution, but it’s definitely a problem that could turn people off to this news consumption experience.
3. Search needs work to increase revenue potential. Right now you can only search within one document at a time on the Kindle, which means I can’t search for a keyword across all the books, PDFs, newspapers and magazines I have stored there.
So, for instance, if I see an interesting article in Technology Review on the power grid, I can’t quickly look up related articles from previous issues of that magazine. If I could, I would love to preview them. And maybe buy some. See that’s the thing: Search can promote purchasing as well as build brand. All kinds of publishers — including news publishers — should work with Amazon on this issue. Everyone could benefit.
4. The display rocks. No, it’s not in color (yet). No, it’s not huge (yet). No, it’s not a touchscreen (yet). I don’t care. This electronic ink display is crisp, easily readable and quite attractive. I quickly grew accustomed to clicking a button to turn a page, make a note or navigate among documents. Once that became automatic, I was blown away by the quality of the rendering. It’s the same reason why I prefer watching video podcasts and YouTube videos on my iPhone: the display is just that good, much better than my laptop. And I have a nice laptop.
5. Check the revenue/splitting deal. Right now, many authors’ groups are angry with Amazon over what they see as a grossly unfair deal for content providers in the Kindle Store’s book contract. (Author Daniel Sawyer pointed me to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ critical annotation of the Kindle Store contract.) I haven’t yet investigated whether news publishers are getting a fair deal from the Kindle Store but, given this precedent, it’s worth looking into. If it’s a bad deal now, that just means there’s room to negotiate. (If you have information on how the revenue split and rights are handled for news publishers, please comment here or e-mail me.)
6. No news available yet on Kindle iPhone application. This week Amazon also launched a free Kindle iPhone application. This is not meant to duplicate the Kindle e-reader experience on the iPhone, but rather to complement what the Kindle does. Specifically, if you’re reading a Kindle book but get stuck in line at the DMV and don’t have your Kindle with you, you can whip out your iPhone and read for a while.
I tried this, and it works well. However, so far this app only delivers to your iPhone the e-books you’ve purchased via the Kindle Store — not any newspapers or magazines you may have bought there, nor any PDF files you might have converted for Kindle reading. This is disappointing. Many news organizations still have lousy mobile sites, no mobile-friendly version of their site at all or, (as Barb Iverson and I complained last summer), they don’t default to the mobile version when accessed by a mobile browser. Instead, you need to enter a special mobile URL.
A Kindle version accessible via this iPhone app might be a good halfway step for news organizations that want to be more mobile. It might even be attractive to iPhone owners who don’t own a Kindle.
I’ll be writing more about the Kindle. In the meantime, what’s your experience? Please comment here.
