Amazon.com has experienced huge success with their on-the-go electronic book reader, Kindle. Third quarter sales were up along with their stock prices, and they contribute much of the success they have experienced to large Kindle sales. In fact, Amazon was able to report that third quarter sales increased by 28% when compared to last years figures. It would appear that many readers enjoy the flexibility that an on-the-go electronic book reader can offer.
It appears that Amazon has been taking notes from Apple, and pretty soon they will now offer their portable electronic book reader as an application that you can run on your computer. Why does this make a difference for that particular industry?
Kindle should do for books and literature what iTunes has done to help revolutionalize music. Now people will be able to download books to their computer and read them on their computer. While some will always prefer reading a book on paper rather than on an LCD screen, let's face it, getting used to this type of movement may be necessary. One way that we can "go green" is to save the paper it takes to print millions of books by reading them on our computers instead.
But this also opens the doors to piracy issues. It would be very easy to download a book and read it on the computer without ever having to pay for it. If this happens like it has happened to the music industry, the authors will suffer. After all, music artist can tour and sell out record crowds at many venues, but an author may not be able to tour and sell out arenas. The music industry uses touring as a backup for the hit they take on illegal music downloading, but what will writers do to make up for the loss of income?
However, I do hope that the release of Kindle for PC will entice more people to read books now. The possibilities really start adding up when you think about them. For example, if you don't like reading but enjoy stories then you could sit back and relax while your computer reads the text for you. That would be a nice feature for some folks, especially the elderly or the disabled.
You can find out more about the Kindle release on PC by going here.
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Comments
I'd love to see a Windows Mobile version if they really start releasing a software-only reader. I've been using Microsoft Reader on Dell Axims and HP iPaqs for years but it's hard to find books in .LIT format anymore.
Or maybe just a Kindle device that fits in my pocket like my Axim does.
Just wanted to comment that going away from printed paper books in favor of ebooks on a PC is NOT green. Paper (as in wood) naturally decomposes and all we have to do is plant more trees to produce more wood or recycle paper we've already used. Meanwhile, PCs and other electronic equipment poison the soil and poison us. And we make sure that the equipment we make today will be junk in very short order. No...that is one thing that PCs are NOT, is green
Why would the "Kindle" App be any better than the multitude of book reader software out there already?
There are plenty of apps for reading and many places for buying over-priced ebooks. Over-priced? Yes. When a hard copy paperback book costs $6.95 there is no way a ebook should cost the same or more.
for Imak. Look at calibre. a ebook library manager and converter.
for Tom. Yet for all those "green" trees used to make books we have to use energy to cut them, transport them, pulp them, dry them, bleach and treat them and then package them. I love books but give me one ereader (Astak EzReader, 20 formats) and I can read all 12000+ books in my electronic library.
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