For the record, I have not used or even seen an Amazon Kindle yet, so this is not a bona fide product review. These impressions are based on the ideas presented by Amazon and the Newsweek article about how the Kindle is supposed to operate, and what the future may hold for similar devices versus its progenitor, the humble book.

First, a brief overview. The Kindle is an electronic book (e-book) reader just announced by Amazon. It uses the same E-Ink® technology as in the iRex iLiad and Sony Reader, which allows for very high contrast, low glare, low power display of text and greyscale illustrations. The screen is formed from magnetically charged ‘pixel’ balls that can be flipped between black and white when a page is displayed, at which point no further charge is needed to maintain the image - which means that power is needed only to change a page, while the proportionately dominant time spent actually reading takes none. The high contrast and high resolution image produced closely mimics the output of ink printing typeset on paper. No backlight is necessary to view the image as compared to a computer screen, which reduces eyestrain and makes the page visible in bright sunlight. Pages are turned via side-mounted buttons, plus the Kindle includes a full (slightly split) QWERTY keyboard for typing in annotations, search terms, etc.

The Kindle differs from previous e-book readers such as the Nuvomedia Rocket eBook, iRex iLiad, and Sony Reader notably in its advantageous position with the content ecosystem. The Rocket, one of the earliest attempts at a reader, began with its own proprietary document format sold through exclusive partners; both the reader and RocketEdition format have since been discontinued. Sony began with the same approach, with its own brand of DRM via files in BBeB format and sold through a dedicated Sony Connect online store, but has since opened up the device to also read PDFs and other unprotected formats. The iLiad has been open from the start, supporting “anything you can print from your PC,” and like the Kindle also includes a wireless link (albeit Wi-Fi) to access new material. The Kindle is more closed, in that it primarily draws from content sold through the companion Kindle Store run by Amazon, but with the obvious advantage over a startup like Nuvomedia or a tech-first company like Sony that Amazon already has the publishing relationships to back up its launch. Just as Apple’s iTunes Store has helped make the iPod a dominant round-trip destination for new music, podcasts, videos, etc., Amazon is pushing the back-end depth of its device. Wireless access is through free-with-purchase 3G (cellular) instead of Wi-Fi, providing more ubiquitous coverage. Access to the Kindle Store is built into the device, akin to the recent joint effort between Apple and Starbucks, so you can purchase new books or subscriptions without syncing through a computer. To keep the Kindle autonomous, all of your purchased content is mirrored at Amazon in case you lose or need to replace your device.

Specifically considering the device itself, a few limitations are worth noting. Two current negatives of the E-Ink technology are that, first, it can only produce greyscale images, not color since that requires combining varying shades of primaries (the Red/Green/Blue of TV and monitors) which is not yet possible with the two-polarity black/white charged dots. Second, changing pages requires a ‘reset’ of all dots back to black before the next page is rendered, which appears as a ‘black flash’ before each page turn; you can see this in the demo videos on Amazon’s site. As for content, pricing is somewhat discounted with new releases costing $9.99 and classics at $1.99. That may sound attractive at first, but it falls prey to the same offsets as other digital purchases. As noted in the Newsweek review, due to the DRM protections you lose the ability to lend out, give away, or resell any titles - or in fact to view them anywhere except on your registered Kindle. You lose any color content (cover art, illustrations). And you lose the literally-hardcopy backup, relying on Amazon to keep that title ‘on the shelf’ forever. As for the low cost classic pricing, the title quoted in the article (Dickens’ Bleak House) is in the public domain and available in numerous free electronic formats. On top of these restrictions, the publisher is saved the costs of materials, printing, binding, shipping, and remaindering but currently resists the idea that any of those savings should be factored into the cost of a limited e-book edition (Amazon is evidently subsidizing some bestsellers to act as loss leaders). Ultimately you are paying for the convenience of access and formatting for a specific device.

Clearly these will not appeal to the book-lover, the collector, or the thrify shopper who trawls used bookstores for baskets of cheap paperback mysteries. Who are the likely target audiences, then? First, the availability of subscriptions to top-line newspapers and select for-pay blogs with automatic updates make this attractive to the periodical reader on the go. The emphasis on discounted bestsellers and the initial gee-whiz factor may draw in the trendy reader, who buys strictly off the NYTimes Books list and reads things exactly once. As supported titles expand beyond new releases and bestsellers to current textbooks and reference works - added to the existing integration of Wikipedia, annotations and dictionary lookups - the student and researcher may find this a convenient alternative to bulging backpacks and satchels. With some expanded support for technical manuals and ruggedizing, it could find purchase in manual-heavy verticals like maintenance and engineering. And the always-online (within 3G territories) access to new titles makes it a possible replacement for the airport bookstore for the regular traveler (a scenario enthusiastically described by Neil Gaiman in Amazon’s “Reactions From Bestselling Authors” section).

Whether this presages the ‘end of the book’ is likely premature, although calling the device ‘Kindle’ is somewhat provocative to anyone sensitive to Fahrenheit 451 parallels. The Newsweek article does go into some speculation on the possible changes the wide adoption of this kind of delivery model could bring to book publishing, mirroring those already underway in other media further along the digital conversion curve. The more positive aspects are already seen with the advent of Amazon in its current form - the “Long Tail” of sales afforded by providing a deep catalog plus on-demand printing to maintain books effectively in print indefinitely. As a purely online storefront with no physical goods becomes more accepted, the barriers to entry for authors drop, since all you really need is a manuscript and a seller plus whatever online promotion you pursue, such as on some literary equivalent to Facebook yet to come. The environmental benefits of not creating paper books without a guaranteed owner are straightforward. And just as the per-track pricing model at the iTunes Store started to break songs free of the album sales model, undermining the pressure to create ‘filler’ tracks just to pad out a standard album length, so online publishing could revitalize other approaches to writing in less than novel form like the essay or serialized novel. Experimental forms such as the hypertext narrative could return, previously hamstrung by the impossibility of instantiation in a physical form. The digital book with an always-on wireless connection also provides for more of a community to develop around a title, building on what Amazon comments and IMDB forums already provide.

The potential downsides of these developments also get an airing in Newsweek. Although the author presents both advertising-supported books and updated editions as advantages, the prospect of getting interrupted by an advertisement between chapters of a novel is hardly attractive. Likewise, the flipside of allowing authors to update their books after publication - which ceases to have the finality it once had - opens up the potential for devaluing proofreading and editing, and creating the sort of ‘permanent beta’ endemic in projects like online games and Google applications. The lack of a true finish line has a psychological toll on the author, who no longer commits to completing a work but only to ‘getting something out there’ - and if most authors are anything like me, that will diminish the final product by reducing the stakes of perfecting it. It also opens up the idea of post-release censorship, creative backpedaling (cf. George Lucas), or even content hacking that has previously been restricted to blog comments and Wikipedia articles. While there is certainly room for experimentation and innovation around the act of writing much as music and art have been expanded by the collaboration enabled by online communities, the product of a single intelligence generated by individual contemplation should not be discarded in the process. The hyperlinking process could aid the Joyce scholar trying to untangle the many extratextual references, but “getting rid of the idea that a book is a [closed] container” as a goal has its own costs.

As for myself, I have followed the development of E-Ink and electronic books in general with great interest but have yet to feel the compulsion to buy into any of the closed environments they predominantly represent. The iLiad, with its open structure and tablet screen, has the least restrictions, but at the greatest upfront cost. The Kindle is a first-generation product with no recurring charge for wireless usage, so it will take time for it to create a market base and begin to earn back its keep via the margins on captive content sold through the associated store. We can expect that, like Microsoft with its Xbox and Zune initiatives, Amazon is around for the long-haul, and is willing to take a loss on the first generation if it means building the momentum and working knowledge to improve for the second. Indeed, Microsoft has shown tremendous gains between generations of both of its hardware ventures, so perhaps once we see the Kindle 2, it will have sloughed off some of its only-a-librarian-could-love case design and balanced its feature set in a way that is more affordable, compelling, and expandable to use with content from other sources.* Or we can wait and see what Apple can produce to compete, should the market prove worth entering - perhaps the rumors of a flash-based tablet have some credence after all.

* The product details that you can add Word and image files to your Kindle via email for $0.10 per file, but it is unclear whether you can use the USB and SD card support to load your own documents, e.g. PDFs.