My Kindle Stuff

It’s here, boys and girls.  I’m happy to be among those announcing the latest Kindle release.  Per Amazon and yours truly (I got to play with one about a month ago), the latest Kindle is thinner, lighter and comes with enough new features to justify an upgrade.

Since I got some time to use the Kindle 3, before I highlight new stuff, I’ll give my initial impressions.

Despite it not being greatly reduced in size, the Kindle 3 (K3) seems a LOT smaller.  I’m not sure if its because of the color change or not, but it really fits better in your hand.  Also, those couple of ounces make it noticably lighter.

The graphite color makes the text really pop.  It actually looks like a sheet of paper under the glass.  I haven’t seen the new DX-and it hadn’t been released when I saw the K3, but I loved the new eInk screen.

Even lighter and smaller didn’t make it feel flimsy.  The K3 is solid in-hand and has a slightly tackier surface on the back so you don’t feel like you might drop it.

All in all, there are just enough new tweaks on the K3 to make me click that Order button and get ready to pass off my K2 to the hubby when it arrives.  I highly recommend that you get one if you’ve been on the fence.  If you do, I’d be happy if you’d use this Affiliate link when you order.
3G & Wifi version
Wifi only version

Okay. On to specifics.  If you want more details on everything, you can download the new K3 User guide here.  The official press release is also linked to below.

Screen
As expected, it comes with the latest eInk screen that has a much improved contrast.  If you haven’t seen it on the newer DX, I can assure you that it beats the current Kindle’s contrast hands down.  And since the current 6″ Kindle 2 has a pretty good contrast, that’s saying a lot.

The screen also refreshes much faster.  I had to readjust my page turning to accommodate the faster page turns. And no more loud clicks when you turn the page.

Internals
The battery is twice as robust, lasting up to a month with the wireless turned off.  It will be nice to go on longer trips without taking the charger.

The storage has also been doubled to 4GB so you can carry a ridiculous number of books with you where ever you go.

Externals
The 3G+Wifi model comes in Graphite or White, but the Wifi model is white only.

All the ’stuff’ has been moved to the bottom of the device. Power, charge, Adapter plug, USB, Volume controls, etc. They’ve also added a microphone that for now is not enabled.  I see some updates coming….

Home and Menu are now button instead of on the side and the Previous/Next buttons are smaller and on both sides of the K3.  Those are welcome, but the new location of the Home button took some getting used to. The 5-way controller has been flattened, now its a button with raised edges for up/down, left/right.

There are new Kindle covers.  They come in Black, Burnt Orange, Chocolate Brown, Hot Pink, Steel Blue, Apple Green and Burgundy Red.  They come in two models, one with and one without a reading light.  The one with a reading light uses the power from the Kindle.  Both covers have an elastic strap to keep closed when not in use.
Cover with Light - $59.99
Cover without Light – $34.99

Connections
There are two models now – 3G/Wifi and Wifi only.  The Wifi only model is $139–insanely cheap; especially when compared to the prices of eReaders last year.  I’m sure there are quite a few people happy to see the price get lowered.  The new price points put this device well within reach.

Now, when downloading an item, you can monitor the progress via the menu.

Once configured, your Kindle will automatically connect to your home or other wifi connection. Also, connection to AT&T is free and does not require a sign-in.

Reading
The PDF Reader has been updated so that you can do dictionary lookups as well as add notes & highlights.

The Kindle 3 has been enhanced with read-to-me menus.  This is a great new accessibility feature which was promised after the lawsuit following the university trials.

There are new fonts – condensed, regular and sans serif.

Line spacing has also been brought back (hello!) and Audible has been added to the Kindle Storefront menu.

Official Press Release

Amazon announced last night that they have made a deal to publish 20 books from the Wylie Agency.  They will be publishing electronic versions of these books and have 2 years of exclusivity.  12 of the 20 will be available globally.  The books are a mix of highy regarded literary works.

They are:  (I) indicates international availability

• “London Fields” by Martin Amis  (I)
• “The Adventures of Augie March” by Saul Bellow  (I)
• “Ficciones” (Spanish Edition) by Jorge Luis Borges(I)
• “Junky” by William Burroughs
• “The Stories of John Cheever” by John Cheever  (I)
• “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison  (I)
• “Love Medicine” by Louise Erdrich  (I) Pre-order
  
• “The Naked and the Dead” by Norman Mailer  (I)
• “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov  (I)
• “The Enigma of Arrival” by V.S. Naipaul
• “The White Castle” by Orhan Pamuk  (I)
• “Portnoy’s Complaint” by Philip Roth
• “Midnight’s Children” by Salman Rushdie (I)
• “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” by Oliver Sacks
• “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” by Hunter S. Thompson  (I)
• “Rabbit Run” by John Updike
• “Rabbit Redux” by John Updike
• “Rabbit is Rich” by John Updike
• “Rabbit at Rest” by John Updike
• “Brideshead Revisited” by Evelyn Waugh (I)

They will have an updated and uniform look that has been optimized for the Kindle  screen.  ALL are $9.99 with prices slightly higher outside of the U.S.

See the Press Release here and for more Kindle exclusives see this page.

Well, along with the iPad and Kindle for iPad, agency pricing has arrived.  After a week of books being unavailable for some Kindle versions, Amazon has updated the pricing for same.

All I can say after reviewing the prices is that if publishers are trying to boost sales and increase market shares, somebody is living in a dream world.  As pointed out on a Kindleworld blog post, this new pricing leaves less money to the author and publisher and less money in customer pockets.  The only one making more money on this deal is Amazon, who if believed, would rather have done without the pay raise. (Note: Random House is the only ‘Big 6′ publisher staying out of the agency model for now.)

All of this was instigated by Apple’s contract negotiations with the publishers in preparation for the iPad. Perhaps Apple knew that they wouldn’t be selling as many books from their iBookstore so wanted a bigger piece of the pie–who knows.  But as pointed out by a savvy blogger, the publishers who signed on forgot that the Kindle encompasses more than a single device.  If you have an iPad, you can only read books on that single device–if you own a Kindle, you can read all of your purchased books on your PC, Mac, iPhone, Blackberry and now your iPad.  Why publishers would side with Apple on this one baffles me (but see previous post).

Frankly some of the pricing is ridiculous, but Amazon wants to make sure you know where those prices are coming from.  In the listing (and in bold when viewing from your Kindle) is the name of the publisher and a notice that “This price was set by the publisher”.  The pricing for these books has also been moved out of the Amazon price column and into the New price column.

There is a mix of price points.  Some books are higher priced than the paperback–even old ones like some from the Twilight series, while still being less than the hard cover version. Some are reasonably priced, with the Kindle version less than both, and some are too high to be worth mentioning.

I’m waiting to see what the near outcome of this pricing will be.  Are publishers going to react to inevitable lower sales numbers of ebooks by lowering pricing? Will they use those numbers to say that ebooks ‘don’t sell’? One thing I will be watching–will the ebook torrent (piracy) levels increases.

For some alternatives to the higher prices, the Kindle Boards forum users (Kindle board is one of the most popular Kindle sites) offer suggestions to lower prices, alternatives to the Big 6 books, links and lists to free and cheap books along with other suggestions.  The best suggestion is to contact the publisher via email to let them know what you think. When all is said and done, your mileage may vary depending on which books you are looking for, but you’ll definitely be paying more if you don’t want to wait for prices to come down by using the ‘wait for paperback’ strategy.

(Update 9:20PM 1/31/2010) – Well, Amazon gave into MacMillan’s demands for higher prices.  For the full story see the NYT article here.  It remains to see what, if any fallout there is for the publisher or the ebook industry as a whole.  Certainly, publishers own their content and can set the pricing for it, but I really wonder if they are trying to save hardcover sales, give Amazon a swift kick in the behind by ’siding’ with Jobs & the iPad (go google that one!) or just don’t value the ereader consumer.  Whatever the case, I guess they didn’t read the article published on Slate last year Does the Book Industry Want To Get Napstered? Nuff said.

Wow.  This has been a crazy weekend in the Kindleverse!  Amazon pulling MacMillan titles, forum boards erupting with both anger and dismay, Twitter going crazy with 140 character comments on same-plus a lot of bad information. Authors weighing in on mostly the publishers side and some Kindlers vowing retribution by both bad reviews (here we go again) and boycott tagging.

When this all first happened, I was angry at MacMillan.  About 8 books on my Amazon wish list were gone and I don’t even remember which ones they were.  Now I’m just weary of the whole thing, while at the same time extremely curious on how it all will shake out.

I do have a couple of observations to make, though.  First, I’m a avid reader and had to join Amazon prime to defray shipping costs.  I almost always purchased mass-market paperbacks over hardcover books just to appear like I was trying to stay within some sort of reasonable budget.  There were a few authors that I loved which I felt merited the $20 for a (discounted) hardback, but not many.  I didn’t go to the library and I didn’t use 2nd hand books because, frankly, old paperback stink and I hated the yellowing due to the cheap paper used.  Then I discovered the Kindle which I’ve had a Kindle for about two years now.  If anything, I read faster and now spend way more on books.

Just as pre-Kindle, I spend more than $9.99 for some authors, but my average for a Kindle book is between $5 and $7.  I don’t really care about book format or DRM, because I have the tools to change both, and I don’t share my Kindle account with anyone, so if I find a good book, I just recommend to my Kindle friends so they can purchase their own copy.

That being said, there is NO WAY that I can see myself regularly paying $15 for a newly published ebook; and I doubt that I would even remember the book when the price came down to what I would pay–unless it got recommended by an online review or other listing.  That is a hit-or-miss proposition as most books are reviewed when they are released, not 7 months later.  The best example of this for me is the slow release of the Robert Jordan Wheel of Time series.  I was going to buy it for my Kindle until I saw the release dates.  After I saw that it was releasing approximately one book a month and that I wouldn’t be able to get through it for a year, I decided to wait and haven’t thought about it since.  Some ereaders that I know got them on the darknet to read now, then would buy the ebooks as they were released.  That can start a whole conversation about ebook availability vs. piracy which I won’t go into.

Some are saying that this whole thing was started by the immenent advent of the iPad and it’s iBook store.  Maybe, maybe not, but as a non-LCD ereader, I think the publishers are barking up the wrong tree if they think that avid readers will be embracing reading books on what is virtually a flashlight on any type of regular basis.  I do plan on getting one, but it will be either as a replacement for my iPhone, or as a living room and portable laptop-lite device–not as a reader.  I’ve seen this sentiment repeated more times than I can count, so if MacMillan and other publishers are looking as the iPad to revolutionize books, I fear they will be sadly disappointed.

I don’t know who will win this war, but America loves a good fight.  Hey! Maybe they should put it on Pay Per View?

This morning I was greeted by the below email from Amazon:

Dear Kindle User,

We’re sending this note to remind you about proper attachment and use of your Kindle cover and about Amazon’s Kindle warranty. You can view instructions and illustrations here:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200390460

ATTACHING THE COVER

To install the Kindle, open the cover and lay it on a flat surface. Then insert the bottom attachment hook on the cover into the bottom slot on the left edge of the Kindle. Rotate the Kindle to insert the top attachment hook. Then slide the switch down slightly to lock the cover attachment hooks in place.

Be sure to place the Kindle flat on the cover during installation. Do not tip the Kindle at an angle during installation, as that may cause the cover attachment hooks to bend.

USING THE KINDLE COVER

When using your Kindle with the cover, be careful to open the front cover only. If you open the back cover and pull the cover away from the Kindle, that may cause the attachment hooks to bend and could result in cracking or other damage to the Kindle.

THE AMAZON KINDLE WARRANTY

Your Kindle is covered by a One-Year Limited Warranty you can view here: http://www.amazon.com/kindlewarranty

If the attachment hooks on your cover have become bent, or your Kindle has developed cracking or other damage near the location where the hooks connect to the Kindle, please contact Kindle Support by phone or email regarding warranty replacement.

You can reach us via phone or e-mail through our website by clicking the Contact Us button on our help pages at http://www.amazon.com/kindlesupport or directly by calling one of these numbers:
Inside the United States: 1-866-321-8851, Outside the United States: 1-206-266-0927.

For more information, please see the Warranty Service section of the Kindle Return Policies Help page:

http://www.amazon.com/kindlereturnpolicy

Oooookay.  Well, I totally knew that little problem.  It was reported by Kindle users months ago.  It’s also one of the reasons that I use M-edge Covers.  They have two elastic bands on the top and bottom right corners that prevent you from opening the cover the wrong way and damaging your Kindle.  They also have a variety of cover types: flip top, GO! (like Amazon covers in color) and ones that hold their booklight.

So Kindle users take care.  And if you don’t have one, grab a M-edge cover today.  For other Kindle accessory suggestions, check out the images below and take a look at this post that shows all the goodies I got for my Kindles.

My Kindles

My Kindle and laptop w/ Gelaskin Bookshelf skins (Kindle on iZel stand)

My Kindle in M-edge cover w/ Decal Girl skin

Kindle 1 & iPhone in matching Decal Girl Skins and M-edge cover