It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

I made a fantastic discovery yesterday while reading for Digital History (totally unrelated to the subject of the readings -- it's that "rabbit hole syndrome" again): Kindle 2 is now available in Canada!

A wireless reading device from Amazon, the newest incarnation of the Kindle has 3GB of space and can hold up to 1500 books. At the moment the Kindle Store on Amazon.ca has just over 300 000 books available for readers to choose from with more being added every day (a product review of the Kindle 2 written in Feb. 2009 indicated that Amazon had 230 000 titles available at that time. That means that more than 70 000 new titles have been added in just under 10 months! The thought of how many more titles could be available by this time next year is mindboggling.)

What makes the machine even more enticing is that you can download most books wirelessly in less than 60 seconds which makes it both quicker and potentially much more environmentally friendly than the other print-on-demand (POD) options (like Espresso) that are out there. And, unlike Espresso (which is still awesome despite being less than environmentally friendly), Kindles are now readily available to the public in more than 100 countries worldwide. Book prices aren't standardized, but the majority seem to sell for $9.99 which is significantly cheaper than the cost of a new hardcover, and even most paperbacks. Admittedly though, charging $9.99 for a book which no one has to print, package or ship in the traditional sense (and won't ever take up shelf space in a bookstore or warehouse somewhere) is uncomfortably close to highway robbery. On top of that, the $259.00 price tag for the reader makes me hesitate before buying a Kindle. I mean, a person can buy a LOT of paperbacks for $259.00.

That said, Kindle 2.0 has some pretty fun features. At the moment, Amazon is experimenting with a text-to-speech feature which allows any book for which the publishers have given them the audio rights to to be read aloud (in either a male or female voice, depending on what floats your boat). I'm not a fan of audio books, myself, but I can see where this feature might be useful in those situations in which you need your hands free to do other things (driving, cooking, etc). Plus, the Kindle 2 also lets you annotate the books that you’re reading, which is a pretty handy feature to have, especially for anyone using the reading device for work or school purposes. And I know it’s a relatively minor feature, but I also love the dedicated Wikipedia application; just think how helpful it is to have all of that information at your fingertips, wirelessly and without charge, at all times.

The Kindle 2 isn’t without its shortfalls. Customers have complained about numerous aspects of the product from its physical design and font sizes to the compatibility with various wireless service providers and the fact that you can’t arrange your books into organizational folders. Still, that last one can be partially resolved by tagging your books by genre or subject matter.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m still a confirmed “old school” bibliophile – I love the look, the feel, the smell of print books. I cringe when I see dog-eared pages and I’m not above buying a new copy of an old favourite that suffers from torn covers, yellowed pages or water damage. I don’t see the Kindle as signalling the death of the print book, but I do appreciate its portability and sheer storage size. I guess I see the Kindle as complimenting my collection of books, not as a replacement for them.

Note 1: I realize that this post came uncomfortably close to sounding like a cheesy infomercial, but can you really blame me? Kindle = awesome.

Note 2: I also realize that Kindle has competition in the form of a Sony product (the somewhat clumsily named Reader Digital Book). But, from what I can tell, it's currently an inferior product (holds less books, screen size is smaller, no annotation feature, etc.) so I feel safe to reiterate: Kindle = awesome.