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Amazon debuts Kindle reader, blogs included

Posted by Cory Bergman on November 19, 2007

As advertised, Amazon’s new Kindle reader debuted today. It’s a wireless digital book with a paper-like display and a $399 price tag. So far, 8 newspapers are available for digital subscription ranging from $5.99 to $14.99 a month. You can also subscribe to magazines like TIME and Fortune. But wait, over 300 blogs are available, too — but for .99 a month each. Paying to read blogs on a black and white screen? Now Amazon is just getting silly. (And no, Lost Remote is not one of them.)

Adds Baker in comments: “I really like the reader technology, but I won’t buy one until it’s a $99 reader — it’s gotta hit a sweet spot price or I think it will continue to struggle for adoption — or until Apple starts to dominate this market with the Touch and iPhone, thereby forcing reader prices down.”

  • http://www.davidandrewjohnson.com david johnson

    oh yeah, that blog thing is nuts. who decides who gets to be in that club?

    i was trying to think where is the killer use for this kind of thing – students, scholars, lawyers – big book people. could you carry all your semester text books on this thing? a whole law library? can you take it to the library and load it up?

    but, as i was talking with my lovely and talented LRWife this morning about it, and she was all like, “dude, if it doesn’t fly with the book club mom audience, it isn’t going to fly.” (yes, my wife calls me dude, and that’s only one of the reasons why she rocks.)

  • http://www.bakersphere.com baker

    i really like the reader technology, but i won’t buy one until it’s a $99 reader – it’s gotta hit a sweet spot price or i think it will continue to struggle for adoption — or until Apple starts to dominate this market with the Touch and iPhone, thereby forcing reader prices down.

  • Anonymous

    I keep thinking this is some poorly timed April Fools joke…

  • Michael Chastain

    Pros:
    * EVDO and online purchasing
    * Pricing and availability of books (compared to other offerings)
    * Additional content such as newspapers, magazines, blogs, Wikipedia
    * Battery life
    * No monthly service fees

    Cons:
    * Lack of interoperability (can’t use books on other devices)
    * Size–too big to fit in a pocket, maybe too small for reference works.
    * No backlight
    * Cost of hardware (will likely drop quickly)

    The size is the biggest factor for me. Maybe it’s personal preference, but I always find devices this size to be too big to carry with me everywhere but too small to get real work done. It’s the same problem I have with UMPCs.

    For years I’ve done almost all my pleasure reading on my PDA phone. I always have my phone with me, it fits in my pocket, it’s small and light enough for extended reading in any position, and it’s backlit for reading in bed without disturbing my wife. The small screen works remarkably well for linear reading.

    This is a nice first effort by Amazon, but it’s still not enough to convince me it’s a logical form factor.

  • Rocker

    Blogs and newspapers/most magazines are free online…why would we pay to read them on this device?!? But if the price comes down (a lot), I’d consider getting one…easier to take 5 -10 books on vacation with this.

    The fact that they are discounting books does solve a big problem with an earlier effort in this area, the e-Book (Rocketbook…I forget what it was called) a few years ago..they were trying to charge full retail for their books. I kind of liked that thing, but the idea of a scenario where publishers get to eliminate all their physical production and distribution costs and still charge full price was too much to swallow. Of course, banks tried to charge for online banking at first too…same issue. Fire all the tellers, close all the branches, save a fortune…and charge the customer for the privlege of serving themselves. No wonder Citibank is teetering.

  • Tim

    As I’ve possibly posted elsewhere: they ought to adopt the cell-phone model for this: subscribe to “N” things for two years, and the reader is free.

  • peter arthurson

    newspapers are salivating at this…

    they are convinced it will turn everything around for them.

    I cant figure out why they think that.

    it’s a reader for the black and white print product, which has no special features (unlike free interactive newspaper websites)

    remember when publishers thought that pdf versions of their newspapers would save them?

    now, they are convinced a mobile version of the pdf newspaper (for a fee) will save them. good luck with that idea.

  • http://people.etango.com/~markm/ Mark Mascolino

    There only hope is that the “I need something that is Drop Dead Easy” market segment buys this because otherwise in a few years general purpose hardware along with ubiquitous Wi-Fi will kill this.

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