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The Kindle Index
- guccimane 14y agoiOS and Android have a Kindle app, which means every iPhone, iPad, and Android device can also be a Kindle. This fact is conspicuously missing in the analysis.
- mvid 14y agoThey can be, just like a computer can be. Ever tried reading on one of those for >30 minutes? Awful.
- joejohnson 14y agoThe last four or five books I've read were in iBooks on my iPhone. I can't imagine that the Kindle App for iOS is a dramatically worse experience.
- JumpCrisscross 14y agoThe last seventy or so books that I read on my iPad, from novels to textbooks, weren't too bad.
- corin_ 14y agoI've never had a problem reading text on my blackberry, or even books on my iPad - but since I got a Kindle I do far, far prefer it to the iPad. Maybe that's largely a personal opinion or maybe most people would agree with me, but either way my point is - yeah, it's not "too bad", and is perfectly fine, but it doesn't mean it's not significantly worse.
- lmm 14y agoYMMV, but I found reading books on my transformer a lot more comfortable after I switched the kindle app over to white-on-black rather than black-on-white. It was enough that I almost gave up on my actual kindle for a while.
- walkon 14y agoAll this pre-retina? I find pre-retina text display blurry to the point of distraction after long periods of reading. Also, how do you hold your iPad? I like the newest and cheapest Kindle's size and weight for holding it an almost any position for long periods of time.
- guccimane 14y agoOK, I guess we should just completely ignore them because you don't like reading on lit screens. Makes sense.
- brunosan 14y agoThe last 2 books I've read (the hunger games ones) were all bought and read on my 2 android devices (Galaxy Nexus and SIMless HTC Nexus). Cross-sync is awesome. I read on planes and before sleeping (you can invert the colors to have black background) The worst part is that I have an actual Kindle (albeit old)... somewhere. I don't miss it. At all. I love reading the kindle app on the phone anywhere, even buying the next one on the spot.
- inovica 14y agoI have 2 Kindles, an iPhone and an iPad (latest generation) and I use the kindle app on them all. There's no issue with the iPhone and iPad - indeed there are times when I prefer them. The Kindle is also much better (at times) than using the iPad
- camiller 14y agoI've read for hours on end on everything from a Palm IIIxe(Back-lit 160x160 grey-scale) and Palm T|X(320x480 color LCD) to a Kobo(e-Ink) and an iPad2. I've had no problems with any of them.
- pdubs 14y agoThere's also a NOOK app for iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows, and Mac.
- guccimane 14y agoAh, I did not know that. But anyway, just to clarify, I mention that these apps exist because it could completely throw off the numbers as to how many "Kindles" (or "Nooks") there are in a given city. What if SF has tons of people reading Kindle books on their iPads? These devices can't be considered pure competitors to the Kindle (or the Nook), and their numbers are way, way too big to simply disgregard.
- camiller 14y agoThere's also a Kobo app for iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, and I believe there may be a Linux beta floating around, or maybe not.
- dkarl 14y agoI had a Kindle once. Lost it in a breakup. I still read more books in the Kindle app than dead tree books, and I don't miss not having a Kindle. Thanks to the Kindle app on my iPhone, reading serves as the mortar of my life, filling up all the cracks. I only used my actual Kindle at home for sit-down reading.
- personlurking 14y agoInteresting, the trend in calling regular books "dead tree books" and in leaving out the "e" in e-books. I have my own ideas as to why this is happening though I fear they would derail the conversation on the article at hand, thus I'll just leave it as food for thought.
- zokier 14y agoI think it just means that the concept of book has separated from it's transfer medium. So "book" refers more to the content than the physical (or digital) representation. Compare to movie vs dvd.
- CWuestefeld 14y agoThere's ample precedent for this, as newer improvements become the norm. You won't often hear someone saying "color TV" or "unleaded gasoline" or "touch-tone phone" anymore. They became the standard, and we began to use modifiers to describe the older, rarer products.
- dkarl 14y agoI agree "dead tree" is a little bit derogatory, and unjustifiably so. Until e-books are strictly superior, until they are as good as physical books in every important way, we should respect what we've got. I think my primary motivation for putting down dead tree books is that the e-books I've bought and haven't read are invisible. They don't sit on my bookshelves openly shaming me for not reading them :-O
- gala8y 14y agoI really like being surrounded by books I haven't read. Books I've read - I put them aside. Put some around and think of it as of an invitation. In Lem's Solaris they have paper books even on space station. (Love Tarkovsky's movie.)
- kalak451 14y agoI read books constantly, and I do own a 2nd generation Kindle, but I think it is buried in a box somewhere from a move I did last fall. I do 99% of my reading these days on either my Android phone, my laptop or my desktop PC. I really think the killer feature that Amazon bring to its Kindle brand is actually "Whisper Sync" more than eInk displays or any other specific device. Being able to pick up my book from where I left off on any internet enabled device is the #1 reason my books purchases are almost exclusively from amazon.
- midas 14y agoI wonder if the reason that there are so few e-readers for sale is because their use-case doesn't really change. In other words, they remain useful for much longer. This might make people hold onto them instead of constantly upgrading to the latest version.
- omarish 14y agoDefinitely agree with you. I've had an older Kindle for a while now. It's an uncanny relationship. With most of my electronic devices, I can tell you the exact specs, when I got it, and how antiquated it is. My Kindle is different; it feels like a book to me, not a complex device. Brilliant work on Amazon's part.
- samt 14y agoBrilliant for you, yes. But when does amazon begin to consider this a bug, not a feature? I worry for the day that some new feature is introduced in .azw files that will break legacy devices. Now that would be evil.
- kalleboo 14y agoAmazon are looking to make money off the books, not the device (they're basically the opposite of Apple). The Kindle device price is trending towards zero - a lot of good money is betting that Amazon will eventually give it away for free, making all their money back on book purchases.
- ChrisClark 14y agoIn my case that is 100% correct. I've got the Sony PRS-650. It isn't wireless, doesn't have a built in light, simple functions (read a book). But there is no reason for me to upgrade to anything that has more features. I plug it in when I want to put a bunch of books on it, I have a light in the case, I only want to read books. No reason for me to upgrade. I'll upgrade when it breaks or another family member wants one.
- muhfuhkuh 14y ago
- kochb 14y agoGo Ann Arbor! Ironic, considering that was the former headquarters of Borders.
- pdubs 14y ago>Kindles and Nooks aren’t really competing against each other so much as both of them are holding on for dear life versus the iPad ...except that Kindles and Nooks aren't trying to compete with the iPad, being completely different types of devices for completely different primary purposes.
- rtrunck 14y agoMaybe some Kindles and Nooks, but the Kindle Fire is certainly not a completely different type of device.
- RandallBrown 14y agoright, but the Kindle Fire competes with the iPad like a Honda competes with a Mercedes. Sure, they "compete" but most likely someone that buys one won't buy the other.
- pdubs 14y agoEven then I find it difficult to compare a $200 7" tablet with a purposely limited app store to a $500 10" tablet with the largest app store around. There are similarities, but I think it's closer to how Toyota doesn't really compete with BMW.
- waterlesscloud 14y agoLos Angeles is an Apple town. Much higher proportional use of Apple products than other cities. iPads are status markers here. I suspect San Francisco is the same. While they may not compete directly, if people already have iPads for other reasons, it seems they'd be less likely to buy a kindle.
- so_says 14y agoI can't help but wonder if the prevalence of Kindles in a particular city relates to the number of brick and mortar bookstores in that city. I am imagining that the more "cosmopolitan" cities probably have more physical bookstores.
- mertd 14y agoI have another suspicion about the validity of the metric. Maybe people in bigger metros just buy more "stuff". For example you can't buy a subway ticket in Ann Arbor.
- jmanamj 14y agoExactly what I was thinking. People who love to read can get cheap, physical books everywhere in cities, and often from appealing local stores. I remember walking past quite a few cool bookstores in Seattle when I visited, and I know Denver has an awesome one. My college town had several. The city I'm working in now doesnt even have a B&N so I am finding new love for my Kindle.
- davidw 14y agoRight. If I still lived in Portland, Oregon, or even Eugene, I'd probably spend lots of time at Powell's or Smith Family and load up on real books. As it is, the selection of English language books here in Padova is fairly limited, and the other option, ordering from Amazon.co.uk is kind of slow too (despite reading, writing and speaking the language fluently, I don't enjoy reading in Italian as much as English for whatever reason, especially when the original is in English). In that light, a device that lets me read books instantly is something of a minor miracle, and one of the best gadgets I have ever purchased.
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- pdubs 14y agoWow, that's not a hasty generalization at all... I'd say ereaders are generally owned by people who enjoy reading.
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- axxl 14y agoSo is the NY Times best seller list though. People will be people whether they read regular books or ebooks.
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- pdubs 14y agoLooking through Kindle bestsellers and print bestsellers, they seem to be very similar lists. I'm not sure why you'd expect them to be any different. I agree that the assertion that ereaders are "elitist" is unfounded, but I also think that your assertion that the opposite is true is similarly unfounded. People will consume "popular" content (books, movies, TV, music) which is generally of "average" quality (where, by definition, most content falls).
- camtarn 14y agoHere's an interesting dimension to look at: prevalence of e-readers (and iPads etc) vs mass transit use. My train to work in the morning is stuffed with people using various hand-held non-phone devices; I can't imagine they'd be as popular with car commuters :) Another (silly) one: e-readers vs holidays taken in hot places. Maybe people don't buy e-readers in California because they're already somewhere sunny, so they don't take beach holidays? ;)
- stephens_js 14y agoAs best I can tell, this article looks at resale data on e-readers and attempts to extrapolate that to use of e-readers. I doubt this extrapolation is appropriate. If, for instance, e-reader use was a constant proportion in all the cities, and the proportion of users who resell their e-reader was a constant proportion, but the proportion of users who resell their TVs was higher in the non "cultured" cities, using the authors' logic you would incorrectly reach the conclusion that the non "cultured" cities have greater e-reader adoption.
- tomkarlo 14y agoUnless I'm totally mis-understanding their data gathering, this post seems completely wrongheaded (or at the least, willfully ignorant and self-serving.) They're indexing the popularity of e-readers in different MSAs by looking at how many are for sale on secondary markets, as a % of what's for sale on the secondary markets in that city. This seems like a really poor proxy for how popular e-readers are in those locations. There are several things they're not correcting for: * The more someone uses their e-reader, the less likely it is to end up on a secondary market - either because you're using it, or you still intend to use it, or you broke it. (This is what happened to my last Kindle - I used it heavily, but eventually something in my bag rammed into the screen and broke it to a point it was unsaleable.) * Some cities may have a larger volume of items per-capita on a secondary market because people have more to sell. E.g. if you have a larger house with a garage, you probably have more items to potentially resell than someone with a tiny apartment. * Cities with a lower proportion of smartphone / tablet users might buy more kindles. That doesn't mean they're consuming fewer ebooks.
- andrewpi 14y agoI agree with you. In addition, compared to the price of living in a city like New York or LA, a Kindle is quite cheap and almost disposable. It makes sense to me that less New Yorkers would be trying to sell their old Kindles.
- tomkarlo 14y agoI didn't think about this before but yeah, with the price of a _new_ Kindle at about $80, a used, unwarrantied one from the prior generation must run as low as $30-40. At that level you're starting to get too low for most people to bother selling it on CL.
- binarysolo 14y agoAgreed -- correlating the amount of Kindles resold on Craigslist to a population's "e-literacy" seems tenuous at best. There's a buncha variables in play when you're considering the types of people who 1) are on the Internet, 2) are using Craigslist to resell, and 3) have Kindles to resell. If anything, I'd observe from the data that college towns resell their Kindles a lot more because the students are receptive to new/hip tech, collect their data point, and plenty of them move on by reselling via Craigslist, which extracts more value over eBay/Amazon, with some opportunity cost of time (to fulfill the order by meeting in person and what not).
- grandalf 14y agoI'd be curious to see the data if iPads were consider e-Readers. Then also to see it if iPhones were also added. I own a kindle, but rarely use it b/c between my iPad and iPhone (with the respective kindle apps and other e-Reader apps) there is rarely a reason to carry along the Kindle. One exception might be if I were going on a long trek in the wildnerness where the extra battery life of e-ink and the kindle offered a significant advantage (along with an absence of network connectivity which would diminis the advantages of the IOS devices).
- bambax 14y agoI don't understand that. You can't use an iPad to read where there is lots of light, so how do you not find the Kindle much more useful? Anywhere where there's sunlight the Kindle has no substitute...
- grandalf 14y agoI rarely read outdoors, I guess. In any indoor lighting environment I've tried, the iPad works well. I will probably buy a new kindle one of these days to try out the latest. My current one is the first generation device which is a bit less ergonomic.
- camiller 14y agoInteresting. Since I believe the underlying data for market share is for US re-sales of the hardware I would be interested in how adding international data would fare. Kobo is a Canadian company as is rumored to have a significant share of the international e-reader market. I'm also curious if, since the stats are based on devices being for re-sale if the cities near the top have batter local economies and more people are selling old devices to upgrade to newer ones where in an area with more economic uncertainty folks might be holding on to their current electronics longer and not upgrading as often. In the interest of full disclosure, we have three Kobo e-readers in the family (Borders liquidation sale $50 each).
- pragmatic 14y agoWould be better with some more data. Ex: Overall literacy rates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States "In 2011, the National Institute for Literacy estimated that 47 percent of adults in Detroit, Michigan are "functionally illiterate," meaning they have trouble with reading, speaking, writing and computational skills." So Detroit is not likely to be a hotspot for ereader sales. Also data from Amazon: (books, magazines and newspapers purchased per capita) 1. Cambridge, Mass. 2. Alexandria, Va. 3. Berkeley, Calif. 4. Ann Arbor, Mich. 5. Boulder, Colo. 6. Miami 7. Salt Lake City 8. Gainesville, Fla. 9. Seattle 10. Arlington, Va. 11. Knoxville, Tenn. 12. Orlando, Fla. 13. Pittsburgh 14. Washington, D.C. 15. Bellevue, Wash. 16. Columbia, S.C. 17. St. Louis, Mo. 18. Cincinnati 19. Portland, Ore. 20. Atlanta source: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1568187&highlight= http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=iro...
- gbog 14y agoWhat annoyed me the most in this post is not the lame analysis, it is the assumption that all readers are US citizens. No printable words can describe this.
- vbock 14y agoI just think it's a bit bizarre to use sales of dedicated reading technology as a proxy for books read. As has been pointed out here, there's a lot of not-so-dedicated tech that can read e-books. Plus, you know, there are books. Major metro areas still support great independent book stores. Places out in the hinterlands don't, which means that downloadability is a bigger factor. Anyway, seems to me that if we really cared about literacy, we'd want a random sample of peeps asked how many books they read last month, not what hardware/software they have on which books might potentially be read!