However, for most of us, to adopt a book reader en masse, the book reader will have to be able to show any arbitrary page of any book every published. It has to match the eye in the way that CD/iPod matches the ear, able to store and reproduce the entire visual range on the book reader so it can reproduce any book ever published.

Children’s books are often books of paintings, art books are paintings and photos, technical books have essential figures and diagrams, fiction has illustrations, even pulp fiction typically has a full-color cover. Even the very earliest books had hand-painted illustrations and sometimes gold leaf painted on the first letter of a chapter. Books about TV and movies have color prints from TV and movies. Magazines are full of color. The Web is full color and universal and necessary, and books about the Web are color. Design books are color. Interior decorating and recipe books are all color. You have to have a color screen to show book content. You have to have at least Web-level interactivity if only so you can make Internet links in books and magazines functional.

Kindle reminds me of the MP3 player I had before the iPod came out. I work in pro audio, so I knew there was something dramatically wrong with a 1999 music player that could store half of the songs from a CD in really bad quality, lower than an old analog cassette tape. I still had one of these proto-iPods because I’m a total audio nerd, like Kindle owners are all book nerds, but I couldn’t even explain to most people why they would want one for themselves. So I think there is an iPod of book readers coming. But it’s going to have to be something that can show all books.

On the DRM and proprietary format issue, most Kindle customers don’t care because they’re not looking for ebook portability to multiple devices. They’ll start to care, however, if and when they try to switch to other ebook reading devices. And they’ll care more when second generation ebooks come along that act like networked information nodes where various ebooks and other bits of digital content need to interoperate and communicate with one another. This second generation, though, is probably several years out.

:)

I think a more important demographic to survey are those who have already at least tried a Kindle for an extended period.

All of the newspapers available via Kindle have 3 stars or less out of 5, even when accompanied by a few glowing reviews.

People complain about sections being missing, graphics (even ones the Kindle is capable of displaying) being missing, delivery issues, etc.

It’s still developing technology, and it’s inconceivable that there won’t be problems such as this, all of which will get worked out as long as there is a competitive market for both the hardware and the content.

It would be horrible if Amazon got a lock on this technology, just as it would be if Google, Microsoft or the New York Times did. I’m optimistic that it will be almost impossible for a single company to control this technology, so the sooner they all start engaging in “cooptition” the better.

Every device, and every title that is purchased before some sort of industry standards take hold is likely to be rendered obsolete. That’s what I tell people who ooh and ahh at my Kindle… don’t buy it for the long term.

It appears that many people have already figured that out.

If Amazon is wise, they will get hardware neutral real fast and also abandon the semi-lock-in restrictions on the device.

No, I’m not talking about DRM… that’s a publishers option. I’m talking about small irritants such as the fact that only clippings from Amazon downloaded content can be viewed online and that items, even public domain works downloaded from the Amazon store can’t be deleted from and increasingly unmanageable list of “archived” items.

Why did the native format for the Kindle have to be a new invention rather than one of the many existing standards. HTML works, but you have to name it “TXT”. Bizarre. Why can’t it handle PDF files without conversion?

Etc.