Amazon's Kindle - thumbs down

Have you heard about this new product from Amazon, a wireless reading device? It's called the Kindle and it's a simple electronic book with web access to download new books. Priced at $399, it's the size of a paperback.

I couldn't download a pic of it so here's the link to the Kindle on Amazon.com. You know, I love Amazon.com and all, really strong love, but this thing sucks. And it's disappointing. And I don't care how many reviews with 4 or 5 stars from ppl who got to preview it you put up there that exclaim "It's AMAZING!" I'm not buying. I'm not buying the product, the hype, or the tall-tale you're trying to push down my book-loving throat.

I can't sum it up better than this reviewer named Griffin Fariello "Grif" from San Francisco (emphasis mine):

"[Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos] doesn't seem to have read a well-published book if he thinks they "disappear" as you read them. The experience is there in your hands, from the jacket to the binding to the texture and shade of paper. How all that fits with the typeface and enhances the author's words makes the book a vibrant artifact of craft and art. This he wants to replace with an ugly sliver of plastic? I have a wall of books in my apartment. They are as warm and reassuring as the art on my walls. What Bezos, in his entrepreneurial haste, does not understand is that the object itself, not just the words within, is of great worth as well.

"And we are to pay $400 for this device? What if we happen to forget it on the bus or it is lifted from us? If a book I can easily buy another, or take another down from my shelf. With Kindle I'm out 400 smackers and there goes my library as well. What if it gets rained on, dropped in the bathtub, spilled upon? What if the dog chews on it or a child takes a hammer to it? And what of our friends who wish to borrow a book? Must they own a device as well and we then bluetooth a copy across to them? Or is a loan out of the question for we have a license for only one copy that can't be duplicated? And what a paltry gift a digitized book would make. What is there to unwrap and admire?

"And what of the author? When someone asks what I have written, or when I turn to my shelf, in those doubtful moments wondering why I didn't go to law school instead, what will be there? An empty shelf? A solitary slice of plastic? And with digitized books selling for $9.95 or less, how are the majority of writers, those in the great middle in sales, to eke out a living? Almost all major publishers are owned by a handful of tight-fisted conglomerates. Contracts already include "all future technology." The longest section of contracts these days is that covering author royalties - every reason imaginable, no matter how paltry, to cut your royalties in half or even more. With the future Bezos imagines we'll be making .25 or less for every copy sold. Thank you very much, Mr. Bezos.

"As someone who is not only an avid reader, but as someone who's been in the book business from selling, writing, and publishing most of my adult life I hope this thing falls flat on its face."

I don't want to read books electronically. I don't care if the font looks more like book font than computer font. The fact that it's not in color really does not impress me (seriously black and white? I know it saves power but ugh). I want to hold a book, smell the ink and paper, turn the pages, turn a page back if I want to reread an especially delicious sentence or remember a character's name, and look at the pretty cover. Yes, I do sometime pick books based on their covers. Yes, I do remember that a clever quote was on page 84 or that a certain book had 1084 pages (to my best memory: Gone With the Wind). How is a book a book without a number of pages? How do you retrack your steps if you want to reread something that was around the first third of the book, right after a new chapter, on the top left-hand side? I admit I hesitantly tried audio books and liked them when I had a long bus commute but I probably stuck with Audible.com bc I had an one-yr commitment to fulfill my $100 iPod discount. I canceled it right after. I've considered buying another audio book but am ok so far.

And to the reviewer who loved that she could read the NY Times on her Kindle in the morning without having to climb out of the bed to get the physical paper? I'm all for alternate news sources as I get 95% of my news from the internet and 5% from Jon Stewart, but do you really want to skip the experience of getting out of bed, grabbing the rough inky heft of news and reading it? If you're a person who reads the paper daily, I'm befuddled that you'd prefer this Kindle thing. I use my MotoQ to check websites when bored or my email when urgent but at least it's in color. And just when the iPhone has come out with color websites that really look like websites, you'd choose this black and white device?

And to people who are glad the Kindle saves them from having to carry a book? It is a small inconvenience but I like carrying a book too. Maybe bc I have my MotoQ for web access and my PalmPilot for Solitaire and jotting notes that I don't feel the need to carry a book everywhere if I have 10 minutes of "bored time" (which I am not mocking; I totally understand the desire to not be bored). So maybe the Kindle is for people with just a simple cell phone, and the Kindle's dazzling ability to download a book in a few seconds is like magic? Sorry, that's a bit mean. But true??

Technology is changing so many things. But books are books. I welcome technology to come in but for Amazon to have all these authors flaunt their new love for this Kindle, my head just turns sideways, confused. Don't you authors love holding and devouring the physical book too? Isn't that part of the experience? Don't you want to share a book with a friend? Audible and Kindle let you only buy a new book, not an used one or share with someone else.

I don't know how to end this. Would I like it better if Kindle came in color? If Amazon had paired technology with the iPhone instead of trying to create their own product? Or if they just let us readers alone to read our books.