Do you know the book “Print is dead?”
I think it could be titled
“Publishing is Dead” or rather “Broadcast Media is Dead”

By the way, have a look at Miro internet-TV platform.
Couldn’t magazines work the same way?
We already have RSS news readers, but we often don’t get full articles downloaded automagically, do we?
Especially not for paid content.
Just something to think about…

Amazon is smart enough to realize that they can significantly change the game in electronic publishing by getting this thing right out of the gate. Publishing their intentions ahead of time either locks them into a timeline that they may or may not meet or subjects them to “vaporware” accusations if they need more time to develop the product. The market is so miniscule at this point, there is no incentive for Amazon to manage expectations of people like us who already own ebook readers.

If Bezos sees the future of entertainment media as a purely digitized product, why not go into the serious business of distributing digitized book media along the same model of Audible.com? Amazon has surely had time to study this model. And why would a pure-play giant like Amazon ever need to create a physical product?

Just asking.

I would respectfully disagree with you on one detail–your use of “generally” in regard to liking Amazon’s ways of doing business.

Why? To give one example, I don’t think the mass herding of publishers into a *proprietary* format–at the expense of others–is a nice way of doing business. And as shown by the Toys R Us case, other questions arise about Amazon’s use or abuse of power. I’m also not terribly enchanted by Amazon’s playing down its customer support numbers (at least in the past–I’d want to check).

That said, the company has done many positive things, too, such as increasing the supply of books in rural areas away from bookstores, and you can bet I’m looking forward to trying out the Kindle and reviewing it fairly.

Thanks,
David

The media blackout sends a message that 1)Amazon doesn’t really have any confidence that this device will work and 2)Amazon doesn’t believe that viral marketing in online media etc really works. Or rather, it seems that they fear “media buzz” for the potential to spread disappointing information. Instead what they will do is pay for a quick glitzy advertising campaign that will be overbudget and hardly effective and vague about features.

Contrast that with Cybook. No real expensive PR campaign, but they’ve been totally transparent about what they’ve been doing and what stage they are at launching. It’s generated excitement on its own. Sony has also done a pretty effective marketing campaign up to the point of asking for input from people.

I generally like Amazon’s way of doing business, and they’ve done a lot of cool things on the social networking side (lists, etc), and maybe this device will turn out to be cool, but frankly, I feel like I am being toyed with.

Let me ask: what’s so hard about putting up a webpage to mention a future project, with status reports and general descriptions of features? Yes, it’s a competitive world, but that doesn’t explain why it couldn’t have provided information about the basic information.

Why not have a blog by the product developers with occasional screenshots? We love reading these things. (And probably almost every blogpost would have been mentioned on Teleread!)

Amazon sometimes seems oblivious to what book readers are about. Back in the 2004 election, it was revealed that Amazon.com had given more money to Republicans than Democrats (or something like that). Bloggers and readers retaliated by choosing online bookstores with a better record of campaign contributions. People who buy ebooks and ebook readers differ from regular Americans in that they actually read books. Because of that, they are more skeptical about advertising and the promise of “New and Improved.” They don’t enjoy the feeling of being given incomplete or one-sided information. They don’t jump to buy something merely because of a flashy ad or celebrity endorser. And they examine multiple sources of information before making a purchase decision.