The Kindle Changed the Book Business – Can It Change Books?

I love my PaperWhite for reading fiction, but the quality of images and diagrams for non-fiction simply isn't good enough.

I regularly work away and the Kindle means I can find any quiet nook in a pub in which to read without needing to care about the ambient lighting. Even better, I have an illuminated screen that isn't shining a blue-bright light in my eyes that will disturb my sleep.

We need better performing (faster and higher resolution) screens along with more care taken to format texts for reading on an e-reader - the latter is being addressed by Standard eBooks which is a Gutenberg project to address typographical quirks and generally provide a better eBook reading experience.

We aren't there yet, but we are getting there.

My Kindle account (based in France) is the only reason I still have a French bank account. I am terrified of losing the account and therefore all my e-books as I reallocate a "foreign" card and my account switches to that country.

The greatest thing about buying music on Amazon is getting MP3s which I can keep for life. I downloaded them, they are synch'ed to my various backup solutions, and form part of my music library, even if Amazon goes bankrupt and I lose the original download link.

I long for the day Amazon does this for books.

> A decade later, books haven't changed much at all. And only Amazon has the clout to really drive what could and should come next. Not by making pixels just like paper, but by embracing the difference.

Yep — they're all about using screens to mimic paper. Even their product names (Paperwhite) show this. Instead, they should be thinking about ways in which reading on screen can be better than reading on paper.

To their credit, they offer the Kindle Cloud Reader, which lets others tinker with content and how it's presented. But this is only accessible on computers and iPads — they block it on iPhone (yes, even Plus models) and all Android devices. But regardless, this is more open than iBooks, which doesn't let third-party services access their books at all.

I am getting more and more frustrated with my Kindle and resort to buying real books more, because its just so sluggish, pictures/diagrams are often barely visible or not there at all and i have the same problem i have with steam, in that i have huge backlog that i will probably never get to read. That being said, i don't read on my commute because its quite short, so the mobility benefits hardly apply. Maybe reading on an iPad would be more enjoyable for me.

I absolutely love Kindle for fiction, but it is just not even a candidate for any sort of technical book. I'm actually considering getting an iPad for that purpose.

To me, this whole article just drips with techno-utopic hubris. The author seems honestly surprised that in its two decades of existence, Amazon hasn't yet managed to reinvent the book. ("If Amazon wanted to, it could with a single act bring a new form of book into being.") Well, perhaps things are not quite that simple. After all, books have been undergoing constant optimization for the past two millenia - never mind decades. It's hard to truly reinvent something that has been successful (and continually improving) for so long.

I'm not against ebooks per se - I own an ebook reader and I think it's great for journeys and the like (though I do prefer physical books where possible). But ebooks are just books on another medium, rather like switching from parchment to paper. They are not the "new form of book" the author envisions. I don't think a book needs all those fancy features he talks about. Sure, they can be pretty gimmicks, and perhaps even helpful here and there. But not everything needs to be, or can be, improved upon by digital technology. A book is a book, and it's been that a long time before Jeff Bezos came along. I dare say it will remain that long after he is gone.

I read mostly non-fiction on my Kindle, and the things that bother me the most -- apart from badly formatted books -- are keeping content up-to-date for books in progress (early access and so on), and viewing figures or screenshots. Too many technical ebooks are hardly usable because the images are not sized correctly or it's too annoying to continuously switch back and forth between text and image zooming.

I wish they'd figure it out, since in their monopoly position they have control of authors' livelihood.

Anecdote: My PDF-based (too many tables+figures for reflowable) ebook about programming Z80-based arcade games was recently pulled from the Kindle store for "quality issues" despite good reviews. KDP gave me no explanation, path to improvement, or ability to appeal. I continue to sell the print book.

OTOH, I have a similar PDF-based ebook on Atari 2600 programming which is selling pretty well, using the same LaTeX template.

Meanwhile, a cornucopia of tentacle unicorn erotica continues to be available for purchase on Amazon. This experience is a bit disheartening, and I question whether I want to continue to participate in this ecosystem, at the whim of an unaccountable gatekeeper.

They've changed the book business, and they are dominating the paid eBook market: "According to AuthorEarnings, which studies the book market, Amazon accounts for more than 80 percent of ebook sales in the US."

It'll be interesting to see if they delve into the ePaper market with an entirely new, dedicated device.

To me, to change books, Kindle need to make reading a more social experience. Just like buying a book in a second hand store with notes made by others who read it, I believe that one of the most important aspects of an ebook is to add history so that it's not just a digital asset on a hardisk or in the cloud but a piece of work other people have also read and enjoyed.

I also believe something like tokens could be an interesting way to add this history so that you could re-sell ebooks on a second-hand market and based on their history you might even see an increase in price.

Keep in mind, also, Amazon Digital Services LLC has monetized a majority of free, public domain, publications onto their Kindle Store marketplace.

Once upon a time the Kindle was great for magazine subscriptions. This is still how I read magazines, but these days I think texture is cheaper.

Perhaps if it would support reverse video, white text on black background, it would make the reading experience even more better.