TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Kindle owner’s report, Amazonian gift to U.S. snoops, Mobi’s iffy fate, Aussie e-reader, and gloomy reading study

By David Rothman

So what does TeleBlog regular Brian Carnell think of the Kindle e-reader now that his new baby have arrived?

“The Mobipocket Desktop app—of which I am a big fan—recognized the Kindle right away and had no problems syncing with it,” Brian tells us. But all’s not happy in Mobi Land. Some savvy Netfolks fear, reasonably, that the Kindle might be a Mobi-killer or at least a -crippler.

Brian also reports: “I can type pretty fast on my Blackberry now, but typing on the Kindle is a very slow experience. Maybe users will adjust.”

Not-so-free connections

Just beware of gotchas. Brian wants to download public domain classics and read online newspapers directly. But he warns of some connectivity charges—not immediately apparent to users who don’t scrutinize the paperwork. Amazon even reserves the right to raise the prices of connections. Nothing like freedom to gouge captive buyers, eh?

That said, Brian is excited over his new purchase and we wish him lots of luck with his Kindle. In the short term anyway, the Kindle could be a boost for us e-bookers in general. Just how often does E make the cover of Newsweek? Fawning, hype-filled newsmagazine stories are better than neglect.

Meanwhile, over at MobileRead, a Kindle owner praises the Kindle’s ease of use, looks and personalization (”showed Michael’s Kindle at the top of the screen”).

Kindle’s privacy issues

Less happily, DearAuthor’s Jane notes that the Kindle comes with Big Bro-ish features letting Amazon track your use of the machine. See her source material (under “Information received”) as well as Amazon’s privacy notice, which says:

“We release account and other personal information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law.” The usual Amazon site picks up all kinds of information about you, but now the feds could even see your Kindle’s bookmarks.

Oh, boy. The gang at Homeland Security must be salivating. Terrorists, beware! The Kindle is obviously just for patriotic Americans (it isn’t even on sale elsewhere) with nothing to hide.

I wonder what Franz Kafka, if alive today, would think of the possibilities for a little interaction between Jeff Bezo’s corpocracy and the feds. I don’t see Amazon as having the backbone to resist e-book snooping by the Washington’s snoops—the very stuff about which I warned earlier. You can’t separate tech issues, alas, from political ones.

Mobi’s fate and the Bookeen/Naeb machine

Amid all the Kindle hoopla, a mystery remains, just as TeleBlog reader Frank Lee notes. Why did Amazon introduce a new format? Do Jeff Bezos and friends want to drive people away from Mobipocket toward the Kindle format, which might be just Mobi with new identification numbers used for DRMed books? Is Amazon going to stick it to the independent bookstores and others that have built much of their business around Mobipocket? A MobileRead thread on the Bookeen/Naeb machine, which can read DRMed Mobi, raises some very disturbing questions, and so does Cerebus in our comment area, although Robert Nagle is a bit more charitable toward Amazon (”maybe amazon found that it was much easier to use software intended for one type of hw than to use software with more options to suit a variety of devices”).

In a similar vein, a Dear Author reader says the Amazon didn’t even notify key Mobipocket people in advance about the Kindle, which can’t read DRMed Mobi, just the nonencrypted variety. Weird. But maybe not. In the interest of profitability, Amazon said good-bye to PDFed e-books, so anything’s possible–including a Mobi shutdown. (Thanks to Mike Cane for this DA pointer.)

While independent retailers may love Mobi, it’s Amazon that controls the DRM. Yet another argument against locked-up books? I think so. DRM is more of a protector of problematic business models than of intellectual property.

E-book machine from Aussie bookseller

The good news, for people concerned about the darker side of the Kindle and its format, is that other machines will be on the way. Dymocks, the Aussie bookseller, has told the Sydney Morning Herald that it hope to unveil an e-book reader before Christmas and is in discussions with a manufacturer.

Reportedly, the hardware involved is “capable of supporting the Adobe and Microsoft formats that we’re selling on our website at the moment.” Key word is “capable.” Will the machine come right off the bat with Adobe and Microsoft software?

Oh, and notice no mention of Mobi? With all the questions the Kindle is raising, indy booksellers might do Amazon’s job for it and either avoid or start playing down the format. I doubt Mobipocket books will vanish from independent sites instantly, and maybe never for current Mobi users. But the indies’ earlier passion for the format—which is readable on the best proprietary reader in the business—will surely diminish.

(Spotted via MobileRead.)

New reading survey—and related Kindle thoughts

Following up on its Reading at Risk report, the National Endowment for the Arts has released To Read or Not to Read.

As reported in the New York Times and summed up by the Boston Globe (via the Dallas Morning News):

• Only 30 percent of 13-year-olds read almost every day.

• The number of 17-year-olds who never read for pleasure increased from 9 percent in 1984 to 19 percent in 2004.

• Almost half of Americans between ages 18 and 24 never read books for pleasure.

• The average person between ages 15 and 24 spends 2 to 2 ½ hours a day watching TV and seven minutes reading.

The good news is all the upside potential for reading, especially the recreational kind, if the book industry can spend less time worrying about copyright and more time working with schools and libraries to market the idea of reading for fun.

One way is to blend reading in with the use of the Net, PCs and laptops. Amazon’s Kindle, alas, takes the reverse approach for now and treats books as islands. You can’t read Kindle books on your PC or laptop despite the popularity of the latter platform. While there may be disagreement about the utility and comfortable level of laptops—I share Robert Nagle’s concerns—laptops matter. Jeff Bezos, in backing off from the Mobi platform, is dissing laptop users of all ages.

Technorati Tags: Amazon , Kindle , Mobipocket , Mobi , Dymocks , Homeland Security , literacy , Reading at Risk , To Read or Not to Read , privacy , Naeb