Here’s a post I wrote for Consumerist where I point out that Amazon’s newly-clarified book deletion policy doesn’t solve the real problem, which is that Amazon can delete your books.

I must admit, it’s hard for me to come to terms with the idea of a company retaining any control over something I’ve paid for, even though networked devices by their nature must participate within a larger group. I suspect this will be one of those attitudes that dates me as future generations grow up within such a system and learn to accept it. But books are a special case in that they can contain revolutionary, heretical, or otherwise controversial ideas, which is the sort of stuff that people in power, or people seeking power, like to control. Call me crazy and paranoid, but I never want a government or legal agency wielding power over my books. Never.

“Amazon Clarifies When It Will Remove Kindle Books” [Consumerist]
(Photo: alshain49)

Talk about price cuts–Amazon has slashed the price on refurbished Kindles to $150 (for 1st gen models) and $190 (for 2nd gen). Compared feature-by-feature, that puts them in a pretty sweet spot for people who want to snatch up a device this fall.

However, I MUST WARN YOU: before you buy a Kindle you have to make peace with a very serious aspect of book ownership. In particular, you have to give it up.

You see, you don’t “buy” books on the Kindle. If you actually read the user agreement, you’ll note that what you pay for when you click the “buy” button next to a title is a license to access Amazon’s rights-protected copy of that book. Yes, they let you download a copy of the file for backup, but what you own is a license. Not that copy.

(And if you’re buying via the iPhone app and you don’t physically own a Kindle, you can’t even download those backup copies.)

If for any reason Amazon decides to pull a book–and they’ve done it at least a few times in the past year–your license no longer works. After all, what would it be used on? The book is gone!

As long as you’re cool with that, it truly is a great little device and a great store. You just have to change your expectations of what “ownership” means when it comes to books.

If you can pay $50 to $100 more, consider a Sony Reader device. The books are still rights-managed and locked, but you actually get to own the files, which is an important distinction.

Kevin Maney’s new article in The Atlantic, “The Kindle in Crisis,” doesn’t have a whole lot of new stuff to say on the topic of whether the Kindle is a good device or a bad device; if he wanted to talk about how the Kindle is inconvenient, there are plenty of usability and design issues to consider that he doesn’t.

I do think this quote is funny, though:

For example, the Kindle lets readers down with respect to one subtle but powerful element of the traditional book’s appeal: its role as an identity marker. Pulling out a particular book on an airline flight or in a doctor’s office can mean staking a claim to being a particular kind of person.

I’ve read a similar comment once before (see section III), and both times it made me smirk and lapse into my later teenage years, when everyone and everything ran the risk of making me seem “pretentious,” perhaps the worst fate that could befall me at that age. As a result, I lost pretty much all desire to use consumer products as cultural signifiers. Since a book is rarely handmade, isn’t it, too, a consumer product–the same as flashing a Nike logo on a shirt, or carrying a purse festooned with goofy YSL monograms?

My point, I guess, is that I don’t want other people to judge me based on what I’m reading, and I don’t read for other people. Or at least I strive not to (nobody’s perfect).

So that’s  a point for ereaders, as far as I’m concerned. Unfortunately, I can’t go so far as to say that they make you look less pretentious, since you’re trading off book jackets for a “lifestyle device” that, like it or not, will generate a lot of opinions about you among strangers.  Just note the animosity many have toward people with tell-tale white iPod earbuds.

“The Kindle in Crisis” [The Atlantic]

(Photo: Ed Yourdon)