Is the Kindle really revolutionary?
I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about the Kindle, Amazon’s book reader that quickly and easily downloads digital books. It just may make readers (well, me anyway) change how they think about books and reading.
Seth Godin bought a Kindle two months ago, and shares some observations in his blog. He says that while it’s a fine book reader, it doesn’t improve the act of reading a book.
“Word processing didn’t work because it was typing but a little cheaper,” he writes. “It worked because it was better than typing. Email didn’t work because it was mail but a little faster. It worked because it was fundamentally better than snail mail…”
But Godin digs the lower cost of aquiring a book, which could impact publishing in a big way.
“Once you have a device that lets you get any book in a few seconds, one that eliminates both paper and inventory (the two enemies of every publisher and bookstore) then the marginal cost of a book drops dramatically. And as we learned at the iTunes store, when something costs a buck, it’s a fundamentally different purchase than when it costs $10 or $20.”
So while he loves the seamless downloading, but is not so crazy about the interface, Godin is mostly intrigued by how close the Kindle comes to revolutionizing the way ideas are sold and spread, and how short it comes out in the end.
Keeping on eye on the evolution of the Kindle promises to be exciting.
