I've become a Kindle addict

Just a quick update on life with my new Kindle...

I'm hooked.

I'm not getting rid of books by any means and there are definitely some items that I wouldn't read on the Kindle. This week, Farhad Manjoo at Slate offers a perfect example as he dissects why a Kindle, at least as it is currently configured, doesn't fit the newspaper reading model. Earlier this year, Jacob Weisberg, also of Slate, penned a fascinating column entitled "How the Kindle will change the world". When I read it, I could understand his premise -- a culture that reads electronically doesn't need to be any less literate than one that reads works printed on dead trees -- but in all honesty I had my doubts.

It wasn't so much about the electronic presentation of the words. I get probably 85% of my news from online sources now with the notable exceptions of the Sunday New York Times, the New Yorker, Newsweek (though I'm not sold on the new version, which feels a bit like a knockoff of "The Economist" to me) and my guilty pleasure, Entertainment Weekly. Instead my doubts centered around the idea of reading extended works on a screen. News articles on my computer monitor were not a problem but a novel? Really? Yup. Being given a Kindle and settling down to read using it has completely sold me on the idea.

Once I start reading a book on it, it doesn't seem to matter that I'm not physically turning pages. The text is crisp, I can adjust the size for given situations -- smaller type when lying in bed with the Kindle up close, larger type if it sitting a bit farther away on the kitchen table. It's comfortable to hold especially with the optional black leather cover (the second part of the birthday gift that landed the Kindle in my hands) and I definitely notice more often the hand cramps that can occur when keeping a book open now.

The gizmo is an ideal, one might say dangerous, means of addressing our need for immediate gratification. You finished a book and want another? Just download it and your one-click account at Amazon gets charged automatically and invisibly. If you want to avoid that easily bloated American Express bill, the Kindle is a great vehicle to revisit the classics. Many books in the public domain are "Kindle-ized" by volunteers and are now available for free or less than a dollar. As a result, I've enjoyed such favorites as "Beau Geste" and "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" for the first time in years while many others, including the complete works of Shakespeare, are waiting in the wings.

It's even extending beyond books. I recently renewed my subscription to The New Yorker's print edition. I'm wondering now if I should have instead gone with the Kindle edition that I found out about later - less expensive and more green. On the other hand, it wouldn't be well-suited to tearing out an article to hold on to for reference any more than a Kindle book lends itself to...well...being loaned or given to someone after you're done with it.

That issue aside, it's actually quite a joy to know I almost always have a book to read with me now, even if I'm not carrying my Kindle. Amazon conveniently offers a free app for the iPhone that allows you to order and read Kindle books. The value for me is that the iPhone app also synchronizes with the Kindle itself so if I have a bit of a break when eating lunch or while waiting for an appointment, I simply open the app on the phone and it brings me to the exact page I stopped on when last reading the Kindle. Admittedly, the screen is pretty small and I read quickly enough that my finger is swiping almost constantly to turn pages, but it is readable. Plus, when I get back to the Kindle, it then opens to the last page I read on the iPhone. Talk about convenience!

Is it a perfect product? Of course not. It is still early days yet and there are definitely things that I think need to be updated in future versions. For example:

• God help you if you ever actually needed to type anything on it beyond a basic search in the Kindle store. The keyboard seems to fight you every step of the way.
• Please add a touch screen! I'm so used to tapping and swiping on my iPhone that to have to shift to a 5-way controller/joystick feels like returning to the Stone Age. I don't necessarily need to swipe my finger to turn the page (though it's fine when using the Kindle app on the iPhone thanks to its smaller size). I'm OK with the "Next Page/Previous Page" buttons. I just leave my hands where they would be normally and a brief pressure from my thumb turns the page. However, it's a mild form of torture to have to use the controller to move up and down through the lists and menus.
• WiFi! Where's my WiFi? We have barely adequate cell phone coverage at our home and the Kindle's WhisperNet doesn't always pick up the signal unless I go stand by an open door or window first. I'd much rather rely on WiFi when it's accessible.
• Flat lists bad, nested lists good. Apparently, the Kindle 2 is capable of storing 1500 books. Anyone who tries to do that is nuts because you'll never find anything or get to it easily. The Kindle's filing structure for the books you have stored is a single flat list that stretches on for as many pages as you have books with three choices for organization - most recent first, by title, and by author. At some point, you're going to want to have the option to establish your own organizational system or have additional options (by genre, for example) with the choice to show the whole list or only certain subsets.

However, I'm not trying to type e-mails or other documents on the Kindle, the 5-way controller isn't used when you're actually reading a book (usually), downloads of new books happen in the background so the slower cell connection isn't a huge problem, and the ability to archive books on Amazon's servers means you don't actually need to have 1500 books stored on your Kindle. As a result, these are relatively minor elements in an otherwise addicting product.

Nope, the single biggest problem is that the books I want to have available on the Kindle often aren't and in ways that seem rather arbitrary. For example, the single most enjoyable fantasy series I've ever read is The Belgariad by David Eddings (that includes the second 5-book series, The Mallorean, as well). It's become comfort food of a sort, something to be revisited every few years like an old friend. However, only books 3-5 of the Belgariad are available for the Kindle. Where are books 1 and 2? And no Mallorean at all?

Like the Eddings books, the Harry Potter series seems to be one that would lend itself well to the Kindle, something you could recall from your archive for that brief break in a crazed day when you just need something fun and comforting to reread. We already own the Potter books in hardcover (bought at midnight on their original release dates), paperback (for actual reading because those 800-page hardbacks get heavy), and on CD (and then digitized for background noise via iPod on long, non-stop flights). I'd be willing to buy them again to have them accessible via my Kindle. Sure, I can click the "Tell the publisher you want to read this on the Kindle" link on Amazon but will they ever be available? Do I just have to check back from time to time?

In the original "Men In Black," Tommy Lee Jones shows Will Smith some of the alien technology on hand in MiB Headquarters. He points to a small gadget and says, "That's going to replace the CD. Looks like I'm going to have to buy The White Album again." I can sympathize. Amazon has come up with the perfect way to get more money out of me as I seek out those trusted literary friends and bring them along for a new ride.

Be nice and share...a quick Kindle update

After submitting an inquiry to Amazon, I received a clarification on the sharing of Kindle books. It turns out that you are able to share books and other publications among as many as six Kindles provided that all of the Kindles are registered to the same account. That must be how I'm able to access and sync books between my Kindle and the Kindle app on my iPhone.

Of course, I mentioned this to Jennifer and immediately got the "yeah, uh huh, no way" face followed by "No, honey we are not buying another Kindle."

I know. I'm just saying that if we did...

What would Gutenberg say?

When we were searching for a house to buy a number of years ago, I was struck by how many homes we visited that were devoid of books. We'd walk from room to room and the only books on display, if any, were exactly that -- displays. Coffee table books designed to instill a sense of taste and refinement, a few works of "literature" artfully propped on a shelf here and there, perhaps a glossy travel book to impart a world traveler's panache to a common split ranch dwelling, but never shelves of books lovingly read and speaking of journeys of the mind or the laughter of children.

Of course, realtors point to books as one of the things that "must go" when preparing to sell a house. "Remove the clutter" they say. "Let people see the walls." But walking around those houses, I never really believed that they'd been full of books to begin with, and that was just so utterly foreign to me. Books give our home character. Well, books and the interior walls that look like they were painted for a kindergarten class, all primary colors and welcoming hues. If we ever want to sell this house, we'll have to start preparing months in advance to have enough time to pack up the books and paint every wall a realtor-friendly off-white.

I grew up around books as did my wife. Trips to the bookstore were and still are a wonderful experience. I love the feeling of walking out of the store or the library with a new book in hand just aching to be read. Our home is full of books. Every room has bookshelves -- classic fiction, art books, poetry, and travel writing in the living room; cookbooks and the "to be read" shelves in the kitchen; chick lit and my history books in the guest room; stacks of mysteries in the bedroom; and sci-fi and fantasy filling a wall in our home office/entertainment room. The children of Gutenberg and his movable type bring us no end of entertainment and fascination.

Our basement is full of boxes of books that we've read and don't have room for or read and don't need to keep but haven't gotten around to donating. At a yard sale two years ago, we sold a number of books and I took the rest to the local library for its fundraising drive. I asked for a donation form (tax deduction, you know) and the librarian didn't quite know what to say when she inquired as to the number of books I was dropping off and I replied "350".

I treat my books like children. When I'm done reading a new book, it looks pristine, no creases on the spine, no dog-eared pages. It's not that I'm anal about it. It's an unconscious thing -- I simply treat my books with care and love and want them to last. It's only when I start to nod off late at night and the book falls to the floor that I occasionally inflict a ding or two.

I almost always have two or three books going at once...the heavy hardback from the library that's ideal for reading at the kitchen table, one fun paperback that can slide into a pocket in my briefcase, perhaps another by my bedside table. I revel in the feel of pages turning and the progression from page 1 to whatever the end brings.

The drawback is that I read too fast. I want to find out what happens. I lose myself in my books and zoom through them. When "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" was delivered into my hands I tore through its 760-page length between breakfast and mid-afternoon. Of course the joy of the story was then followed by hours of sitting around itching to talk to someone else who'd also finished it. At that rate, the library became a financial necessity -- I can't possibly afford to buy enough new books to keep up with my reading habits. Even so, I can't imagine living without my books.

And that's why I'm so surprised that I enjoy my new Kindle as much as I do. A generous gift from my parents and siblings for my 40th birthday (albeit delivered with belated birthday pomp 5 weeks after the fact due to my grandmother's death), the electronic book reader offers an appealing blend of gadgetry and literature. However, even with that in mind, I still was unsure about it. How would it feel to read a book with no pages? Could I stand to read page after page on screen? Sure, I read tons of stuff on my computer for work and entertainment but not novels. Could I lose myself in a Kindle book as easily and as completely as I could in a bound collection of printed pages?

Much to my wallet's dismay and Amazon's delight, the answer is "yeah, it's pretty close." Sure it's different clicking a button to turn a page and a bit disconcerting to not see page numbers but instead the percentage of the book you've read but the text is pleasantly crisp and print-like. After a quick download, I cruised through the new Kathy Reichs mystery in roughly the same amount of time I would have expected if the 460-some odd pages of the dead-tree version had been in my hands instead. I was able to focus on the words and not be distracted by the vehicle by which the words were presented to me. After a lengthy stretch of reading, my hand still cramped but this time from the weight of the Kindle rather than the awkward position of holding a paperback open in one hand. In all honesty, I am also thrilled at the prospect of not having to stuff multiple books into my bags the next time I hit the road on a business trip or vacation. Best of all, the clicking of the Next Page/Previous Page buttons is quiet enough that it doesn't disturb my wife when she dozes off as I continue to read.

Gadget fun and convenience aside, the Kindle will never completely replace my beloved print books, in part because Kindle books aren't cheap and there's no lending library for e-books (yet). A new book by one of our favorite mystery writers is due to be delivered Island Books, my favorite independent bookseller, in the next day or two and I'm allowing myself the luxury of splurging on the hardcover edition. It's a rare author for whom I'll do that but no electronic book reader will ever match the pleasure of walking into the store, greeting Judy and Molly and the rest of the staff and then the thrill of cracking open that brand-new novel and delving into its pages once I get home. Plus, the book will be a bit more tolerant when I fall asleep and it tumbles from my hand to the floor. Of course, a library of Kindle books will be easier to hide if we ever decide to sell the house.

Cross One Off the Bucket List

On Friday, I was able to check off one of those bucket list items -- getting a letter to the editor published in the New York Times. This one was driven by the ongoing and rather frustrating battle between Amazon and the latest publisher that it's looking to pressure, Hachette. As a rapacious reader and a heavy investor in the Kindle method of consuming books, I am finding this whole process to be remarkably annoying.

However, after doing a bit more research, I decided that while I was ticked off at Amazon (so when exactly will we get our pre-ordered copy of the new "JK Rowling-writing-as-Robert-Galbraith" novel that's being published by Hachette and isn't available on Amazon now?), I didn't have much sympathy for Hachette and the other publishers either. Here's why:

To the Editor:

Neither Amazon nor the publishers are pure of heart. Amazon is facing serious pressure on the profitability front from investors, so it is looking to increase margins and reduce costs.

The publishers see e-books as their largest profit area. A Publisher’s Lunch article last year showed the profit breakdown for HarperCollins: A $27.99 hardcover provides a $5.67 profit to the publisher and a $4.20 royalty to the author; a $14.99 e-book provides a $7.87 profit to the publisher and a $2.62 royalty to the author.

While the publishers are making a claim to a noble struggle against Amazon’s efforts to devalue publishing, they are also seeking to protect their higher profits on e-books, not higher royalties for writers. While Amazon claims to want to offer readers the best pricing, Amazon has no qualms about using its powerful market leverage to get what it seeks while inflicting collateral pain on readers to boost its profits.

The two players that are suffering in this situation are the authors (book sales delayed or prevented, dramatically lower royalties) and the consumers, many of whom have invested heavily in the Kindle-based environment.

CHRIS WATSON
Barrington, R.I., May 31, 2014

(originally published in the New York Times op-ed letters section on June 5, 2014)