“Kindle. It means to set on fire, ignite or excite. And that seems to be Amazon’s plan for the book industry with the creation of their Kindle. If you know what this is, you may or may not already have an opinion on it. If you don’t know what I’m talking about don’t worry; you will soon.”
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Kindle. It means to set on fire, ignite or excite. And that seems to be Amazon’s plan for the book industry with the creation of their Kindle. If you know what this is, you may or may not already have an opinion on it. If you don’t know what I’m talking about don’t worry; you will soon. Kindle is an e-book reader created by Amazon that debuted in Nov. 2007. There have been mixed opinions about it, but one thing is for sure: it is certainly changing the book industry.
This is the future of book reading. It will be everywhere, said author Michael Lewis. Since its creation in 2007, Kindle has done quite a lot to achieve that. Amazon has over 100,000 e-book titles in fiction, nonfiction, fantasy and travel. Some publications have even come out exclusively in the e-book form including biographies on the next possible first ladies Michelle Obama and Cindy McCain. Amazon’s efforts to make the Kindle successful seem to have paid off. It’s estimated that in the first eight months there were 240,000 devices sold.
The current price is $359. While the price might seem too expensive for college student pockets, there is a possibility that might benefit us in the future that would make the price reasonable. Right now a college student can expect to pay anywhere from $200-$500 for textbooks for just one semester. E-books are much cheaper. A bestseller on the Kindle Web site is $9.99 as opposed to the print list price of about $25. This means the cost of a $200 textbook could be significantly lessened if published as an e-book instead of print. If this trend caught on at college campuses it could make the cost of college a little easier to manage.
While this new technology seems promising on the surface, it has its underlying problems. There have been some criticisms about the device. It is easy to hit the wrong button and be sent back several pages and it’s not hard to see why. If you look at a picture of the Kindle, the buttons are small. Also, while Amazon has taken a good stab at this new technology, there are some technical flaws.
So the suggestion is to wait. This technology will advance and get better. Consider the strong advancement of cell phones; 10 years ago they were big and clunky, but technology improved and now you can check your e-mail, text message, listen to music and, oh yeah, call people. Just as DVD replaced video tapes, and CD took the common place of cassettes, it is quite possible that with time Kindle could replace books. It is possible that books will be far less popular than their e-book counterparts.
There is promise and opportunity with this revolutionized book reading. The access and convenience e-readers will provide benefit the book industry with this new technology. It will allow for cheaper prices and technology. Technology is changing rapidly. It will be interesting to see what time will do for the book industry and its newest creation.
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