The Writer’s Coin

So I love to read and I love gadgets. Wouldn’t Amazon’s new Kindle device be right up my alley?

Maybe.

Newsweek has a great profile on it that will pretty much tell you everything you need to know about it.

I’ve been considering reading e-books for a long time and was excited when Sony’s Ereader came out. I played with it at a Borders and it looks and feels pretty much like the Kindle.

But would I ever pull out a gadget like this on the train or on a plane and read from it? I don’t know, but right now I don’t think I would. It’s just too weird. Too out there for me. You know you’re going to get stared at hardcore and that’s the last thing I want.

I will give them props for making book buying really simple—the same way Apple has made music buying. That alone puts them way ahead of Sony’s offering.

The music analogy is valid in that it reminds me of the very first MP3 player that ever was (some say it was the second, but I owned it so I’ll stick with it being the pioneer):

This beauty gave me 6-7 songs and was a soft piece of junk. But I was the only one that had one on campus. No one even knew what an MP3 was back then. I even gave a speech about it for a class and everyone was astounded when I shook it as hard as I could and the music didn’t skip.

This could be what lies in the future of the Kindle and the Ereader: mass ubiquity. Until then, I’ll be the guy with the book that no one is staring at.

Tags: amazon, kindle