Amazon Kindle Sales: We Didn’t Start The Fire
The Amazon Kindle hopes to spark the flagging eBook industry. Forgive the corny title and reference to Billy Joel and let’s examine whether this time will be any different from the last time … or the time before that. First thing for you to understand is that I don’t have a Kindle, haven’t seen one first hand and don’t have a real big opinion on the nitty-gritty gadgetology that has been covered so well in other blogs.
I’m looking at the larger picture. First, lets talk price tag. At $399 it’s a pricey bit of hardware which will keep a lot of people on the sidelines. But let’s say that’s not an issue. What about the price of books? $9.99 for a bestseller sounds … good, but not great. Sure it’s cheaper than a new hardback, but it’s enough that it will make people think about whether they’ll buy it or not. It might work for the instant gratification crowd and the book group junkies who want to be the first to read the new John Grisham. But the majority of readers will likely think about waiting for it in paperback, getting it from a friend or finding it used on sites like … Amazon.
Is there an iTunes like future for eBooks? I don’t think so. And it has nothing to do with price and everything to do with the medium.
You’ll listen to your favorite music again and again and again and again. If you’re over the age of 30 you might remember wearing out some of your old cassettes. Books? You might read your favorite books more than once, but it’s not even close to the repeatability of music or even movies. I love Player Piano, I’ve read it three times, but I’ve watched Fletch over 20 times.
Part of the reason for this is that music in particular, and movies to some degree, are passive in nature. You can run, work, code, vacuum and do any number of things while listening to music. Movies don’t make you fill in the blanks, you’re not creating the landscape in your head, all that ‘work’ has been done for you and it’s your ‘job’ to sit back and take it all in. Not so with books. Reading is an active event which ‘forces’ you to think, imagine and create. It will also take you a lot longer to finish a book than a movie or listen to a CD.
Still not convinced? The reason why the iPod and iTunes took off was that there was pent up demand. You wanted to listen to that nostalgic music, and it was tough to remember, and then locate that Devo album and listen to Freedom of Choice. Suddenly you could have all those songs in one place! The shuffle? One massive mixed tape!
Simply insert CD, copy to iTunes, sync with iPod and bingo you had your music collection at the tip of your finger … literally. But would you do that for books? Well, you can’t for one thing. Nothing to insert, can’t copy easily and unlikely that you’d even want to go nostalgic and on a whim spend 4-6 hours reading, say … Ender’s Game again.
Finally, the portability of music was a motivating change for consumers. Ditto for movies to a certain extent. But books have been portable for a long time and there isn’t any new technology for books. No Dolby, no HD, no THX. The fundamental technology of books just isn’t changing.
I think Amazon knows all of this to a certain extent, which is why they promote additional functionality, like newspapers and blogs and the ability to view documents and pictures. To me, it just seems like an admission that the core functionality isn’t a category killer … for now. Yes, eBooks will become a viable reality one day, but that day is not today.
