The Kindle is a Relationship Changer
I’ve been considering buying a Kindle for awhile, but have mixed feelings about it. For one, it’s expensive. In addition, I like physical books…they make me feel warm and happy. (In fact, I’m typing this very blog post from a desk at my local public library.)
Nevertheless, I was away last week, so I took the opportunity to download a book to the iPhone Kindle reader and give it a real try. Honestly, it was surreal…soooooo many thoughts swirled through my head as I read the book.
The first thing was that it felt weird to pay $12.99 for something that effectively cost zero to produce. Well, I suppose there were a lot of computers involved to produce it, but the marginal cost of each unit is zero (or very, very close to it).
After I thought about it for awhile I realized that how I felt was a reflection of the new relationship I was having with the “book”. I wasn’t paying $12.99 for the bits that I downloaded from Amazon: I was paying the author for his work!
Think about that. It’s a fundamental shift in consumer thinking…where we go from buying an object–a book or compact disc–to actually just buying the content. In the past, I’ve always considered buying media as a function of the cost to produce and deliver it, but that is no longer the case. My sense (although I have no hard data on this) is that consumer attitudes on this will adapt over time, just like mine did, and we’ll see a reduction in piracy as consumers come to terms with paying for content, not product.
That being said, the Kindle is one model of this new consumption framework–paying a fixed price to the content creator. Another model that comes to mind is what Radiohead did with In Rainbows: they gave it away for free and said pay what you feel it’s worth. Both models are more pure than the previous model of buying an object, and there other other models too–like Rhapsody or Netflix. I couldn’t tell you which is the best, but I’m sure Mr. Market will figure it out.
Anyhow, so many more thoughts on the Kindle…expect another post tomorrow.
It was a few months ago that I purchased a book from Amazon through the Kindle store for my iPhone. I was reading a hardcover copy of “Dreaming In Code” from the Library and I was running out of time with it. I decided that it was worth it to me if owned it and so I purchased it.
In the same way it felt strange to pay quite so much, but I read through the book and enjoyed the experience. Since then, I’ve downloaded a number of samples and a paid for a few more books (Mostly non-fiction, technical books, i.e. Agile Estimating and Planning) . Being on a new project with a few new technologies I’ve starting purchasing a few more PDF versions of technical books through The Pragmatic Press ebook section. I use the PDFs religiously for reference now and transfered a few of them to my phone, after converting them from pdf to epub, and read them in an application called Stanza.
So, I’m doing more reading, less fruitless searching, and my moments where I am waiting are always filled with always something meaningful to learn and enjoy. I actually enjoy the smaller page size of the iPhone and screen light is nice for late nights in the bed.
The very recent price drop has my finger even closer to the checkout. This bit of news of getting PDFs on the Kindle through Savory might have done it.
A friend had stated that she wouldn’t make the move on the Kindle because the lack of the physical representation of the book. Until she felt she had ownership. And I do think that a lot of our ideas of ownership and physical space are going to continue to change. The tangible good is not as important to me as the information.
I recommend more coherent, less colf/flu rambling, talk here at The Technium – Better than owning.
Franklin Webber
7 Oct 09 at 7:12 pm