The Kindle: A Year in Review

For Christmas last year, I got a Kindle, which I've really enjoyed. So I figured I'd take the time to discuss the experience so far. So, on the plus side: The screen is really rather excellent. There's no difference between reading that screen and reading an actual printed page, as far as I'm concerned. Also, the number of books that are now part of the public domain, or distributed by the estates of their original authors for free or at least very cheap. I've gotten to read a lot of older books that I probably wouldn't have otherwise. For example, I bought a PG Wodehouse omnibus that included a lot of Jeeves and Wooster stories, which were an absolute delight. I think I paid a total of a dollar for it and got several thousand pages of quality reading. I also got a free Agatha Christie novel, a super cheap compendium of Conan the Barbarian stories, the novels that follow The Three Musketeers for free, they're all a lot of fun. One of the main things I enjoy about it is that I can just get a bug in my ear to read something, and then have it ready to go in a moment.

On the downside, there are a few issues with availability. I've been reading a lot of Iain M. Banks novels lately and really enjoying them. So I figured I'd grab one of his earlier books, so I looked it up, and discovered that it apparently was not sold in the US Kindle store, which is problematic. I understand that certain publishers have rights in certain markets, but if it was a physical book, I'd be able to find a copy at a used bookstore or on Ebay or something. With Kindle, I'm limited to their store and the books they're licensed to sell. So that's problematic. Also, the price of many books on the store is more than their paperback equivalents. I understand this is an attempt on the part of some publishers to protect the sales of their physical products, but as a consumer, I'm somewhat indifferent. Their cost of production for the digital book is effectively zero, so the price should be at least somewhat less. It also works against one of the primary reasons I like the Kindle, which is that I don't have to find storage for all my books. Seriously, there's a lot of them, and I don't have a huge amount of space to keep storing them all.

So it's pretty excellent overall, with again, the few drawbacks that will probably get better with time as e-books become less of a gimmick and more of a standard.