Kindle owners are people who still want to read books
It doesn’t sound like a problem that Kindle owners are people who still want to read books, does it? But it is. Take a look at the age distribution of Kindle owners. When movable type came out, the assumption was that people’s reading habits wouldn’t change: they’d still want to read the same ancient works that were “popular” before the printing press. When audio recording came out, the assumption was that we’d now be able to record live performances so that anyone could hear them. When film came out, we knew we’d be able to see plays even if we were far from Peoria. When videotape came out, we knew we’d be able to watch television shows even if we weren’t home when they aired.
Is the Kindle designed specifically for people who want to keep reading books the same way they’ve always read books? Are e-books all about just storing our paper in one compact place, but not changing the way we interact with it?
It seems to me that the Kindle is about reading books, rather than about reading. When iTunes came out, it wasn’t just a way of listening to our CDs, it was a way of listening to our music. Combined with the later iPod, it drastically changed how we interact with our music. Kindle appears to be about restricting readers to the book style of reading with more limited formats than books.
And what ever happened to Amazon Pages?
- 70 percent of Kindle owners over 40?: David Carnoy
- “We can't call this the most scientific poll ever taken, but it's probably a good indicator of the Kindle's age demographic. If you add it all up, over half the owners are over 50 and 70 percent are over 40.”
- Buy Books by the Page with Amazon Pages: Sid Steward
- “Amazon Pages will dole out the data in increments-by chapter, section or even a single page. Thus, one needn’t buy an entire book-although that option will exist, too-if all one desires is, say, a recipe or other chunk of how-to info.”
- The Kindle is not good for screenplays: John August
- From the comments: “I figured out a way of putting a PDF with the formatting on the Kindle. You need a program that converts PDF files to JPGs.”
More e-readers
- A gaming library in my pocket?
- The iBooks application, like, I suspect, all good e-reader software, lets you drag and drop PDFs and images into it.
- George Orwell’s incinerator
- Amazon shows by doing why digital restriction management on consumer items is a bad idea.
- Eucalyptus, revisited
- Eucalyptus is a great replacement for the paperback, not so great at using the fact that it’s a computer. But if you enjoy classics, I highly recommend it; it’s a beautiful e-reader for your iPhone/iPod Touch.
- Apple censors Kama Sutra
- Apple denied the beautiful e-reader Eucalyptus because it lets you search the web and find classics works of pornography… like the Kama Sutra. They’ve rejected the app because… you might use it to read Victorian porn.