Kindle boasts success; Reader gets my Nod

Jeff Bezos is welcoming customers to the homepage today of Amazon today with news that the Kindle is back in stock. His cover note (.pdf) on the online seller's site links not only to the company's annual letter to shareholders, which is all about the electronic reader, but also boasts of the product's more than 2,000 reviews to date.

Apparently, the Kindle is living up to its hype - at least in terms of sales.

As I reported earlier this month, I finally caved to the groaning weight of manuscript pages and traded paper for a Sony Reader. And after a couple of weeks, I would say I qualify as a convert, but not an evangelist, for the whole idea of digital book.

Advantages first -- it's light, easy to use, and quick to download Word documents and PDFs. While I have yet to crack the manual (reading directions is not my strong suit), it is straightforward enough to figure out how to pop up the font size, browse through a selection of downloaded files and bookmark a page. I am currently carrying five books around with me and I love the ease of dropping one, slim, leather-bound gadget into my bag. The cover is a nice touch, too, by the way. Earlier versions of the Reader felt more like a PDA, or a Blackberry on steroids. For the book lover, it's nice to open an actual cover. For the multi-tasker, it's great to have more than one option of reading material when you are stuck at the DMV or waiting for a meeting to start.

The biggest downside for me is still the screen -- harder to read than a computer. Another glitch happens almost every time you hit the "next page" button. It flips quickly enough, but often repeats the first sentence or two of the previous page on top of the new page, something that can grow annoying rapidly. I have yet to figure out how to alter the screen's brightness (yes, I realize that the manual must cover this but I have not gotten that far).

I have started carrying the Reader with me wherever I am and conducting my own market research -- looking either for validation that it is the next iPod or evidence that the paper book will never cease to exist. From bankers to bloggers, the initial reaction is always interest. The more technically inclined tinker with it a bit and scan a page or two; the less digital tend to examine the packaging. The overall response -- mostly positive, but no one seems inclined to rush out and buy one.

All the opinions together are probably best summed up by 800-CEO-Read's Todd Sattersten who was in Austin last week and had a few minutes to fiddle with the Reader over breakfast and discussion of his just completed Portfolio book, The 100 Best Business Books of All Time. "They just aren't there with it yet," says Todd, whose office holds both an earlier version of the Reader and a Kindle.

As for me, I'm a convert for my work reading, but not sure I will ever feel the urge to download War and Peace. The skeptics say I'll change my tune on an overseas flight. But anyone who has been stranded without a power cord knows, the pages of a book never need a battery.

Bezos' Kindle rocks the book world

Jeff Bezos, the man who reinvented the way the world buys books with Amazon.com, has started a new firestorm of publishing controversy this week, releasing the latest in a series of electronic gadgets which, by design, could render the books we hold, read, linger over, revist, catalogue and collect -- all but obsolete.

Others have tread into these electronic waters, most notably Sony with its Reader, a device I've briefly sampled but couldn't get too excited about. The Reader seemed clunky and too complicated, lacking both the tactile experience of cracking open the pages of a book and featuring a screen that required some tinkering to be legible. And although I have grown weary of toting a very heavy bag of reading material on every flight and jamming books and magazines in my handbag to kill any potential downtime, I found that I couldn't like the Reader even though logic told me I should. And the bottom line is, when you don't like something, you probably won't use it.

It seems that a trio of improvements to the idea of virtual book are making the Kindle a big story -- so big, in fact, that Newsweek devoted a cover story to it. The Kindle allows the download of books directly to the device without a stop at a computer. It allows one to change the the size of the font, something the over-40 crowd struggling with the decision to use reading glasses will no doubt appreciate, and it packs 30 hours of battery life. Weighing in at less than a pound, there can be no doubt that it will lighten everyone's luggage which is no small feat in a day when passing through airport security makes most people wish they could leave everything they own at home to avoid the hassles of packing and unpacking while lines of fellow passengers sigh around you.

The advantages are clearly there, but will the reader follow? Will it, as Bezos has said, "change the way readers read, writers write and publishers publish."?

While the purist in me refuses to imagine a world without physical books, I can't help but think of my children and the entire generation to which they belong, who have grown up in a world not only digital, but instant and on demand. The other night we dug out an old VHS holiday movie and my youngest had to have the concept of "rewind" explained. Many of us will recall gathering around the television set (minus remote control) to watch those classic movies which aired once a year and were major social events. We can also remember when computers filled not desks but rooms, 8-track tapes were "really cool" and playing with friends involved no screens but things like bikes and board games. Given that all that, is it really so hard to believe that a world without physical books is possible? Again, the purist moans, but the hard eyed realist who barely moves to a different room in the house without her blackberry isn't so sure.

Herb Schaffner, the publisher of McGraw Hill and someone savvy and excited about the digital potential of the written word recently said me, "books are the original portable entertainment device." Clearly, he's right. But Jeff Bezos just may be the man to change the form of those books forever.