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Weekly UpdatesTHE WAY we read books, newspapers, and magazines will change when Amazon's Kindle 2 becomes as popular as the cellphone in a few years' time. While the older folks will take a longer time to catch on, the youngsters would have no problems adopting this portable reading device. The days when children have to strain their backs carrying heavy textbooks would be over. They merely have to lug the Kindle 2 to school.
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As iPod and several telcos have changed the music industry, Kindle 2 will save the books and periodicals publishing industry. The early E-book readers introduced over 10 years ago were unattractive. They were large and heavy and the text was not crisp enough. As there were few E-books available, and downloading them was a complex process, few book lovers joined the queue to read electronically, they still preferred to read the hard copy and add them to their bookshelves for reference later.
Amazon.com's Kindle 1 saved the day and with the recent introduction of an improved reader, Kindle 2, it marks the success of electronic publications. The price of the hardware at US$360 (S$529) is still a stumbling block for those who want to join the gadget-loving crowd. The consolation is that you can recover this investment in hardware as the E-publications are relatively inexpensive compared to the paper editions.
For example, the immediate download of a book costs US$9.99 on average. The monthly subscription to the Los Angeles Times cost US$9.99 per month. A monthly subscription to Time or Newsweek costs US$1.49. Compare this to their news stand price of S$8 per copy. Most E-magazines on Amazon allow new subscribers to try out the publication for two weeks without charge.
The Kindle 2 is an improvement over its predecessor. It has a better keyboard and displays documents in more formats. The user can download books and other publications from anywhere with Internet access. The drawback is that the screen is in black and white. For Kindle E-mail sending, Amazon charges US10 cents per message in north America. Kindle 2 can read the text with a mechanical voice that has no intonation.
It is true that the future of the printed newspapers and certain magazines is very bleak. Many media owners in the United States have closed down their publications rather than continue to suffer losses from the falling circulation and advertising. The mistake they made is to offer free access to their content via the Worldwide Web in the hope of attracting online advertisements. However, this move led to further loss of sales of the paper version and they could not charge premium prices for the electronic advertising.
The books and periodicals publishers see hope in the Kindle 2 as they can at least increase their circulations and in turn advertisers will return to the electronic pages. They gain savings from printing, paper, and distribution costs. Technology has saved the day. Journalists can keep their jobs but the friendly newspaper vendor who brings the news to your doorstep before you go to work will go the way of the dinosaur.
R Tan Chee Teik
Editor
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