Renee,
WI

Editor’s note: If the book is available on Kindle, the reader can increase or decrease the letter or font size to a level that’s comfortable for them, according to Cinthia Portugal, a spokesperson for Amazon.com, who wrote: “Customers can choose from six different font sizes with Kindle and Kindle DX, from very small to very large. We’ve heard from customers that they frequently change the font size while reading the same book — small during the day and larger later at night when their eyes start getting tired and it gets darker.”

Kindle Question The Saturday Evening Post

The Shaman Drum wasn’t just a store, but, to one Ann Arbor bibliophile, part of the community’s “intellectual life.” For readers of all ages, the bookstore is a cultural touchstone. Its gradual disappearance seems cause for alarm and even panic. What is a country without its books?

Yet reading, paradoxically, is more popular than ever. Books are sold everywhere, including on the Internet. Hit books — such as J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series — sell millions more copies than bestsellers did just a decade ago. We are still a reading nation. What’s changing is the very definition of what a book is.

“I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve gone from a lifelong hoarder of books to a profligate book-dumper,” says my friend Bob, a voracious reader. He’s figuring out what to put on his bookshelves, and whether to even call them that anymore, thanks to the rise of the electronic book reader. In the short time they’ve been widely available, about a million readers have purchased one and downloaded millions more books to read. It’s no stretch to say e-book readers are already the equivalent of a New York Times bestseller.

It was 1997 when MIT professor Joseph Jacobson founded E Ink Corporation. E Ink displays are nearly as flat as an ordinary piece of paper and draw very little power. It’s these traits that make E Ink displays nearly perfect as a reading medium.E Ink instantly captured the attention of futurists, but it would take several more years and technological breakthroughs to turn E Ink into something that would feel and act like a computerized book.

That’s why Amazon’s Kindle family, at the forefront of e-book innovation, is barely two years old. Amazon, founded by Jeff Bezos, a Princeton educated hedge fund manager turned entrepreneur, has made a business out of disrupting established industries, even his own.

Bezos made Amazon the world’s largest bookstore, even while Borders, Barnes & Noble, and the Shaman Drum Bookshop were all going strong. Today, Amazon sells thousands of other items. It turns out that bookselling was how Bezos perfected a new type of shopping: an Internet-based, home-delivered, customer service-oriented model that changed the way millions of Americans buy the things they want and need.

Customers could buy the latest James Patterson book on Monday and be reading it on Tuesday. It seemed perfect. But Bezos, knowing the book business was in trouble, thanks to high costs and slim profits, decided to reinvent it himself. “Bezos looked at this and said, ‘We have to do this now because no one else will,’ ” says Marion Maneker, former publisher of HarperBusiness and writer for TheBigMoney.com’s “The Kindle Chronicles.”

Sony has two e-book readers—Reader Pocket Edition and Reader Touch Edition (shown here in red) that must be plugged into a computer, for those who enjoy such tinkering. Photo courtesy Sony Electronics, Inc.

Amazon’s Kindle uses a wireless service called Whispernet to connect to the Kindle bookstore, where many of the 300,000 books are just $9.99, and thousands of classics are free. Of course, they’re not books — they’re files wirelessly sent to your Kindle. “You can think of a book and have it 60 seconds later,” says Bezos.
You can also buy subscriptions to newspapers, magazines, and favorite Web sites. The latest Kindle, the DX ($489 as of June 2009), has the largest screen of any reader, almost as big as a sheet of letter paper. It holds over 3,500 books in memory. There is also the smaller Kindle 2 ($299 as of July 2009), which has a paperback-sized screen. Both are about as thick as a weekly newsmagazine and a little heavier. The battery lasts up to two weeks on one charge.

The Kindle will never be the same as a book. But as Bob says, “The Kindle makes reading easier, faster, more enjoyable and yes, cheaper.” Bob, I should note, is a midcareer editor as addicted to the printed word as anyone I know. His adoption of the Kindle makes me think that I, who grew up on the cusp of the Internet Revolution, almost missed the boat! But the more time I spend with the Kindle, the more I agree with him when he says, “I thought I loved books. After I bought my Kindle, I realized that what I really loved was reading.”

Even though you can plug the Kindle into your computer, it’s simpler to use it as a stand-alone device. But Sony has two e-book readers—Reader Pocket Edition ($199.99 as of August 09) and Reader Touch Edition ($299.99 as of August 09) that must be plugged into a computer, for those who enjoy such tinkering.

Whether you bought Eat, Pray, Love from Sony’s online bookstore or downloaded War and Peace free from Project Gutenberg, using Sony’s software, you can transfer both onto the Sony Readers, which can each store 350 books.

Amazon and Sony, with their brand recognition, claim the largest market share of e-readers, but that could change. Hearst, the magazine and newspaper publisher, is developing a competing device. And a company called Plastic Logic has teamed up with Barnes & Noble. Don’t worry; the reader you pick won’t limit your reading material, says Matt Shatz, vice president of digital operations for Random House. “We want to enable authors to be read by as many people as possible,” a view shared by all major publishers.

Best of all, you may not even have to buy a device in order to use one. The next time you stay in a high-end hotel or fly on a plane, a reader preloaded with your favorite newspapers and magazines might be waiting for you as a courtesy. Or, your son or granddaughter could bring one home from school: Amazon is conducting five college trials with students whose textbooks are all on the Kindle.

Think of the millions of pages of saved paper, the thousands of idle trucks, the barrels of unspilt ink: It’s clear that e-book readers are not just black and white, but green, as in good for the environment.

Amazon, Sony, and others want voracious readers of every age and technical ability to be their customers, so they are focused on usability. Their devices are so new it’s unfair to say none are perfect. But they are always usable and sometimes brilliant. All the companies I spoke with say their readers are meant for anybody who loves the printed word.

If you’re not in any rush to buy one, the next generation of readers could sport color screens in less than a year. And Apple is preparing to launch an “iTablet” — part iPod, part reader — as soon as this Christmas. The more big companies competing, the cheaper and better e-books will become.

The biggest hurdle e-readers face is the suspension of disbelief. No one, says Andrew Sivori of Sony, ever thinks an e-book reader is going to be as good as a book. Then they try one. Like a monk holding a Gutenberg Bible, they realize everything changes.

More: Amazon Kindle 2 Review by Dr. Earl Conn

E-Books: A Good Read The Saturday Evening Post

I use the computer, Internet, and cell phone; however, I’m not an expert.

I found the Kindle to be a wafer-thin, wireless, electronic device with a screen measuring about 3 ½ by 4 ¾ inches, smaller than the average book by about one-third.

After reading the brief, printed instruction booklet, I began fiddling with the controls. In 30 minutes, I was searching “Shop in Kindle Store” for a book I had started reading in its printed version: I thought comparing the two would be a good test. That didn’t work, however, because Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago was not among the 275,000 books available on the Kindle.

"The Kindle’s features go beyond what any book can do," says Dr. Earl Conn, "providing an Internet connection at your finger tips." Photo by Dale Pickett.

Then I noticed Philip Gulley’s The Christmas Scrapbook displayed on the Kindle informational screen. Getting the hang of moving the five-way controller button, I hit “buy” at $7.96, a savings of $4.99 from the bookstore price.

After downloading The Christmas Scrapbook, however, it wouldn’t open. I telephoned Amazon’s support line. A person there worked with me. In less than 30 seconds, Chapter One popped up on the screen.

Reading on the Kindle

Turning a page is as simple as pressing the “next page” button. I found reading on the device practically the same as reading a printed book. I checked among the six different available print sizes, but was quite pleased with the factory’s preset size of 10-point type. The Kindle offers six type sizes, the largest being 20-point, which has 12 lines to a page rather than the 20 lines on the preset size.

The Kindle 2 is built for portability. It is lightweight, weighing in at just over 10 ounces, and sports a slim profile measuring just over 1/3 inch. Photo courtesy Amazon.com.

After reading six chapters—65 percent of the book according to the statistic on the screen—I turned off the Kindle to determine if it would return the next day where I stopped—something I could do with a book. The next morning, turning on the machine immediately brought up the page from the night before. That was a plus.

I next tried a newspaper, The New York Times. I accessed it easily and went to sports where I found the top 19 stories, but no baseball box scores. That’s a minus.

Next I tried periodicals, in this case, The New Yorker magazine. I bought the current issue to compare against the one I had received in the mail. At first, I thought the Kindle version might not display all of The New Yorker’s material, including fiction and cartoons, but I was wrong. They followed last on the screen after the articles.

The colorless Kindle is designed to read “like real paper.” Text is sharp and images are viewable in 16 shades of gray. Photo courtesy Amazon.com.

Then I tried my hand at “Add a Note or Highlight.” It took three attempts, mostly because of my awkwardness scrolling copy. Finally it worked. Another feature allowed me to put material in “My Clippings” file, which I could, if desired, transfer to my computer.

I also tried “Start Text to Speech,” which reads the text aloud—in either a man’s or woman’s voice, regular (default), slow, or fast. It’s one of numerous Kindle features that my print books won’t do. And the Kindle plays music, too, either through two speakers or a provided headset.

In my case, as with my computer and cell phone, all I usually require are basic functions. But when needed, the Kindle’s versatility is a huge plus.

I charged the Kindle after receiving it in the mail. At the end of the week and after extensive use, the battery indicator showed about one-third of the charge remaining.

My Kindle conclusions: If I were on an airplane, it actually would be easier to read on a Kindle—no double page in a book to contend with, rather a single screen. The Kindle’s features go beyond what any book can do, providing an Internet connection at your finger tips, while you’re reading.

Dr. Earl Conn is retired dean of the College of Communication, Information, and Media at Ball State University.

Amazon Kindle 2 Review The Saturday Evening Post

I purchased my Kindle two days after Amazon announced it. I wanted to try it. The binding and paper aren’t the important part of the book. The words are the only element of the book that really matter. Books were piled in every nook and cranny in my house before I purchased my Kindle. Now I have a few stray paperbacks and a couple of autographed Vonnegut books stored in my closet. This device has changed my life.

I can now sit outside on a breezy day and enjoy a book without fear of the wind blowing my bookmark away. I can change the font size of small-print paperbacks, making them easier to read. That is great, since I am extremely nearsighted and have problems with tiny words.

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and the man responsible for the Kindle, never claimed he wanted to replace the book. That is not his intention at all. He wanted a device that would improve the reading experience. I feel that the Kindle does that, and it does it well. As Mr. Gulley states in his anti-technology propaganda [Sept./Oct. ’08], many people never crack the cover of a book. Why, then, should we criticize a device that promotes this practice? Why get inflamed over the invention of a gadget that might just bring the world of literature to a score of non-readers?

Perhaps Mr. Gulley should try one with an open mind before he continues whining that it will make cave drawings a thing of the past.

Melissa

North Little Rock, Arkansas

Fired Up by the Kindle The Saturday Evening Post