Marketing the Bolano
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This is the biggest problem with the Kindle:
Amazon must address the needs of very real readers who read only a few books and magazines at a time, who like to download classic non-copyrighted lit and work-related documents for free, and who like to leaf through pages randomly. This last thing is important, though it may be insurmountable: Airport-friendly page turners don’t really require non-linear random-access reading, but everything smart from Harry Potter to Infinite Jest does, and that’s one concern that the Kindle, or any ebook reader, still does not address well.
Sure, there are people out there who read hundreds of books every year and keep 10 going at once, but even among bibliophiles, prolific reading like that is rare. And among the majority of the American reading public (as measured by the NEA), anything over 11 books per year is a lot. It doesn’t really make sense to have an ebook reader that can hold hundreds of titles at once, unless you’re planning on being the one to sell hundreds of books to fill it.
Max is right:
The Kindle may become the preferred device of the discerning and prolific reader, but the iPhone, or something like it, will do just fine for everyone else.
Obviously one could think up uses for the Kindle–perhaps as a tool for researchers who don’t want to lug around volumes or as a tool to book salespeople–but it looks like Bezos has created a product without a huge audience. Of course, if one were to play up the Kindle’s ability to deliver newspapers and magazines in a uniform, simple format . . .
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Time will tell. As Thomas Watson supposedly said in 1943 (he probably didn’t, but who cares?), “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”
Time will tell. As Thomas Watson supposedly said in 1943 (he probably didn’t, but who cares?), “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”
Time will tell. As Thomas Watson supposedly said in 1943 (he probably didn’t, but who cares?), “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”
Time will tell. As Thomas Watson supposedly said in 1943 (he probably didn’t, but who cares?), “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”
the Kindle’s main selling point for me is it’s text-to-speech feature