Literary Fiction Review

During the past week, I’ve become obsessed with the Amazon Kindle—and I don’t even own one. My obsession is more with the concept of ebooks in general, and with the Kindle as the delivery device in particular. I’ve gone so far as to request an interview with Jeff Bezos—the request was denied, but Amazon countered with the opportunity to ask my questions of Andrew Herdener, Amazon’s Senior PR Manager. That interview will be conducted and posted (hopefully) next week.

In the meantime, having had nearly a year to digest the impact of Kindle on both the ebook and traditional book market, I feel it might be time to begin the transition to Kindle 2. The problems with Kindle are numerous (and I’ll enumerate others below) but first and foremost is my conclusion that it has yet to have the desired impact, that of changing the world as we knew it. It’s not so much that it hasn’t been a success—I estimate sales at roughly 250,000 units to date—but that the success has had any limits at all. Think about it—shouldn’t we ALL want a Kindle? Shouldn’t we all HAVE a Kindle? So, why don’t we?

And let’s look at it from Amazon’s point of view. They’re a RETAILER. They make money selling ebooks, right? So how many retailers would like to SELL a device that’s sole function is to act as a point of sale unit connected to their store only? The sole purpose of the Kindle is to make it as easy as possible to sell Amazon ebooks. It’s really that simple and Jeff Bezos has, in so many words, admitted that. In an interview with Charlie Rose, available on the Amazon Kindle web site page, he mentions that Amazon is all about the customer having as pleasant a shopping experience as possible. Now, I happen to enjoy hearing Jeff Bezos’ no-holds-barred laugh, and I can imagine it lifting the roof off Amazon headquarters the day someone came up with the idea of placing hand held sales devices in the hands of as many consumers as possible. But the question remains, why don’t we all own a Kindle?

Well, there are the common reasons cited by many over the past year; its retro-computer clunky design; the choice of a keyboard rather than a touchscreen when you rarely type anything other than search phrases; the lack of color (which with E-ink technology may be a very long time coming); lack of world-wide availability, which is sort of silly when you think of when you might really crave the availability of an English language ebook, to mention a few. But where Amazon really missed the boat was on pricing—and with each unit sold, it becomes more costly to correct the mistake.

There is no way in the world I can possibly understand why Amazon is charging $360 for the Kindle, down from the original price of $400, but still sky-high. Again, think about it: this is a device you hold in your hands that has the ability to buy products ONLY from the people who sold it to you!

Amazon charges $9.99 to download Best Seller Kindle books. Classics cost as little as $2-3. But doesn’t it make more sense to charge, say $100 or even $50 for the unit and even throw in two or three free downloads? How many of us would own a Kindle if they charged $50 and gave us three free downloads? And once we’ve all got our Kindle, how many of us would be willing to pay $11.99 per Best Seller rather than $9.99?

I have no doubt that Jeff Bezos and the people at Amazon thought of this approach before they sold the first Kindle. I also have no doubt that at that point in time, they had a ton of money on the Kindle project without recouping a nickel. But Jeff forgot his roots. He needed to create Kindle the way he created Amazon. It’s not about recouping losses today, it’s about mega-profits when everyone has a Kindle.

So here’s the Kindle 2: More streamlined design along the lines of the iPhone; a touchscreen no matter how rudimentary for those rare occasions when you need to search—remember this is a READING device and doing away with the keyboard can allow enhancement of the screen itself; availability worldwide; I’d add color here, but I don’t think that’s in the cards for the Kindle 2; MOST IMPORTANTLY lower the cost—I like the idea of $50 with three free downloads.

Once the Kindle 2 is released, I have one more piece of advice for Jeff Bezos. Wait two years, until the release of a sure-to-be-runaway-best-seller like, say, a Harry Potter book. And then back up the truck; you’ll need it for the haul you’ll make at that instant when the book is released and all of us push that Kindle buy button at the same time. Your problem then will be the overload you’ll be creating on the Sprint EVDO network, but that might just be viewed as a great problem to have.