There are a handful of really good places to discover books and interact and share with other booklovers. Amazon is the titan of this space, of course, but there are other scrappy contenders that serve some cool functions, particularly on the social media side of things.
Shelfari has long been a standout in terms of its visual display. Giving the illusion of browsing actual book shelves and the ability to enjoy beautiful and interesting and unique book covers is a way to truly extend the experience of being a real world bookstore (without the annoyance and expense, I’d argue!). Borders.com switched to a similar interface as well, and its easy to see why. On top of cool visual browsing, Shelfari also offers a host of social features.
Well, it seems that Amazon acquiring Shelfari. I’m not sure what this will mean for the health of the online books business, but I am selfishly hoping that Amazon will eventually roll out a version of its Kindle product with a dazzling colorful visual browsing interface.
I’ve certainly been a huge and vocal fan of the Amazon Kindle ever since I got my paws on one earlier this year.
While there was a good bit of early skepticism about Amazon’s nifty electronic book reader, projections are now being arced high and skyward. As in more than $1 billion in sales and 4% of the company’s revenue by 2010. “Amazon’s iPod” is now being tossed around, with early sales figures to back it up.
Like the iPod and iTunes combo, the Kindle is easy to use, easy to manage, easy/addictive in making purchases, and actually encourages more of an activity you already enjoy (listening to music / reading books and other stuff on the go). In fact, I’m about halfway through the first history book that I’ve managed to dig into in some number of years. It’s about the battle for Moscow during World War II – on my mind in part of course because of the terrible situation in Georgia.
Princeton University is the latest Ivy League school to begin offering textbooks on the Amazon Kindle. This is a killer idea and use of the Kindle on so many fronts:
* Less weight for college students to lug around
* Students can buy books from just about anywhere, without having to wait on line. And the super ambitious can get a head start on semesters as soon as the syllabus for class is released
* Less worry about the book store running out of required texts (this happened to me several times during my college years, and it’s never fun)
* While there’s no word on pricing, I imagine it would be a great benefit to students to get a discount on Kindle purchases versus buying texts
* Buying digital saves trees, and environmentalism is especially important to young folk these days
* Kindle features are great for research, including ability to bookmark, take notes, and highlight
I almost wrote that Kindle features are perfect for research, but held back because quite frankly they’re pretty clunky at present. But I imagine future versions of the device will be much improved in these areas.
And perhaps the best part from Amazon’s perspective is that if they can lock in Kindle ownership and use with college students, they’ll have a great and self-perpetuating base of customers for years to come.
⊆ June 28th, 2008 by Eric Berlin | ˜ Tags: amazon, kindle
I spent the last week in New York visiting friends and family. While I was far more “unplugged” than usual, I still managed to stow away a few observations about tech and the web from the road.
* The mobile web is an amazing resource while traveling
The best example I can offer for this began when I lost my flight information for my return trip. I had it on a piece of paper, and the night before we were to fly home I realized with dread that I had likely thrown it out by accident.
I thought about calling the airline and explaining my predicament, but knew that it would be difficult given how little information I had to offer. I then realized that I had the confirmation e-mail buried somewhere in my Gmail archives. A quick search on my blackberry turned up all of the information immediately.
I relaxed, and didn’t even bother to write the information down. When we arrived at the airport, I simply pulled up the information once again.
* The Amazon Kindle is a traveler’s friend
Amongst the marvelous features that the Kindle offers is the ability to read a book and turn pages while using only one hand. This is a terrific help while standing in line while holding bags, luggage, food, drinks, camera, and so on with the other arm. Also, it’s light enough to make it worthwhile to tote around with you to sneak in a little reading during any idle in between moments.
Between the blackberry and Kindle, I felt like I had an enormous array of information and entertainment options at my disposal.
* Wolf Blitzer makes some interesting claims
Two days of cross country travel meant that I watched a lot more DVR-free television than usual. Wolf Blitzer of CNN, in promoting CNN.com’s Political Ticker blog, claimed that it was the most popular political blog on the Internet. That would be something to herald and promote, I suppose… but I have no idea how they determined the feat.
Blitzer and the CNN crew are also well known for repeatedly intoning that CNN has the best political team on television. Think they used similar criteria as the Political Ticker claim?
* It’s nice to step away from the interwebs every now and then
Though I peaked at news headlines and e-mail on my blackberry every once in a while, it was refreshing to get away from the daily webby grind for a little bit. Coming back, I hope that the time away will give me a fresh perspective.
There’s some buzz and chatter today about whether or not the Kindle, Amazon’s electronic reader, has reached the proverbial tipping point. Whether or not it has quite yet, I think it’s clear that Amazon has found an iTunes-like model for bringing electronic versions of books, magazines, and blogs to mobile devices, and eventually the masses.
It comes down as it often does to utilizing existing technology (e-books have been with us since 1968, according to The New York Times), leveraging market advantages (millions of people already have an Amazon account), and providing a superior user experience and product offering. Mix in the right price and make it super easy and simple, and you’re on your way to a killer product.
iTunes is also a good model to look at in the sense that the best ideas and best implementations are often simple. Download a free version of iTunes, and a short while later you can be jogging down the street while listening to an iPod jammed with a custom playlist of songs you’ve ripped from CD or purchased from the iTunes store. That’s simple, easy, powerful.
Once you have a Kindle in your hands, you can easily browse and purchase thousands of electronic books (125,000 titles now, up from 90,000 at launch). The really amazing part, the innovative part, comes from the fact in how easily and quickly the purchase and download pushes through, run on Sprint’s EVDO data network called Whispernet. And as Rex Hammock points out, it’s pretty easy to vastly increase your reading selection on the Kindle for free by harnessing Project Gutenberg.
So sitting on a bus, waiting on line at the DMV, stuck in a doctor’s office waiting room – all of those boring and wasted in between times in other words – you can have an electronic version of a book store in your hands, ready to explore. Further, another outstanding feature is the offering of free sample chapters. So within seconds, you can pretty remarkably duplicate the experience of standing amidst the racks of a local bookstore, exploring the latest titles.
Now, more smart iTunes-like leverage comes in: Kindle downloads are far cheaper than purchasing print book equivalents. And the Kindle tells you how much you’re saving. Much like iTunes, it’s easy to start getting into that one-click purchasing groove once you get going.
One potential downside to the Kindle that some have noted is that reading on an electronic device is just not the same as reading a print edition. I have personally had no trouble converting to the Kindle, and for many of the reasons listed above, I’ve actually found that I read more books than I did during my pre-Kindle days due to the ease and convenience. Further, what Amazon calls its electronic paper technology does make for pretty easy reading and page turning, with a pretty close replication of the look and feel of the print edition.
The Kindle already accounts for six percent of Amazon book sales that are available in print and electronic editions. In five years, it may not be a stretch to predict slapping a zero on the back of that six. During that span we’re going to see a huge increase over the current catalog now available, better versions of the current “experimental” browser, new and far superior versions of the Kindle itself (the earliest versions of the iPod now look pretty clunky and crude as compared to the super slick and slim latest versions!), and perhaps most importantly, further price reductions in buying the Kindle unit.
The tipping point for the Kindle may not have quite hit as yet, but I’m guessing we’re getting pretty close.
