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)

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)

Well, I was hoping to see some sort of subsidy announcement today from the newspapers when Amazon announced its big-screen Kindle DX, and while the New York Times did say that they’ll do just that at some point later this year, it will be in a limited capacity, meaning only offered in areas where daily delivery isn’t an option. For the rest of us, it’s a $500 device. I’d love to have a Kindle that can display letter-sized pages at full scale not-quite-full-scale, as well as PDF files natively without problematic conversions, but I think I can skip this for now and stick with my trusty Kindle 1, which is more portable anyway.

$500 isn’t an outrageous fee for a student these days–or rather, it’s not an unexpected fee, compared to all the other costs of getting an education–but I think the real test of value will be the pricing that textbook publishers use for their Kindle editions. If the Kindle DX doesn’t end up saving you money compared to buying your textbooks the traditional way, then you’re going to have to place a lot of value in the Kindle’s portability, and overlook its shortcomings, like the grayscale display and slow page turn time, to justify the cost.

Update: judging by the video demo on the Amazon page, it’s possible they’ve shortened the lag between page turns.

“Amazon unveils 9.7-inch Kindle DX with focus on education” [Apple Insider]