"More anecdotal Kindle sales data: An e-book publisher tells us that in December, his royalties for Kindle sales equaled Sony (SNE) e-book royalties for all of Q4 2007. He added that his December Kindle sales were three times those of November, when Amazon (AMZN) launched the reader." – Richard McRoskey, Silicon Valley Insider, March 6.
The TeleRead take: My guess is that the Kindle’s doing fine, but it certainly would be helpful if Amazon released the actual numbers.
David,
This is completely off-topic, but it’s too brief for me to leave a complete article about.
I just noticed one problem with e-ink devices I’d like to share with your readers. I have over 400 books on my e-ink reader (a Bookeen Cybook) because I often enjoy going back and reading old favorites.
After a days airplane flight to Europe I was quite surprised to see how drained my battery had become. I was down to 30% of power even though I hadn’t been reading that much.
That is when I realized the problem. Remember that the e-ink devices usually quote battery life in page views. When I am reading an old favorite, I often skip through the boring parts and go to the fun parts. Because of the way that e-ink works, paging through screens you never read takes about as much power as if you actually read the book. So when I paged quickly through a couple of books the battery acted as if I had spent all the time necessary to read them.
Michael Harris
I suppose that’s true if you eg page forward 30 times to skip 30 pages, so that it was drawing each of those pages. If you jumped directly forward 30 pages (assuming that’s possible) then it would only be one page view.
Bill,
That brings forward another problem with my Cybook. It is not near as easy to ‘flip’ forward to find a specific section as it is with a paper version. They do have the ability to ‘go to’ a specific page number, but it just doesn’t work as well. Neither does going forward one page at a time.
I don’t have any specific suggestions, but there needs to be a better paradigm for searching/skimming through a book to find specific sections.
Sometimes (not frequently) the book looses my place in the text. Finding the previous spot is a major chore — especially when its a book I’m reading for the first time.
Michael
“Sometimes (not frequently) the book looses my place in the text. Finding the previous spot is a major chore — especially when its a book I’m reading for the first time.”
I have the same problem with p-books, because the pages are loose, I lose my place when I drop it on the floor.
In case no one has noticed, no kindles have shipped to anyone ordering after 2/2, and amazon has not given any reason for the delay or estimate for shipment, apart from one unauthorized amazon customer support person who said none would ship for another 2 months.
I purchased one for my girlfriend a week ago, and now I want one too.
I am very impressed with it. I hear complaints about e-readers and finding favorite pages. On the Kindle it has a nice little dog ear book mark.
Its not perfect, I can make at least a dozen complaints I’d like to see addressed, but over all, its a 5 STAR device. The draw backs don’t come close to the benefits.
My biggest complaint, which must be fixed, is the location of the page turn buttons. I can’t pick up, set down, change hands on the device without turning a few pages. I’ve gotten in to the habit of putting it to sleep (think screen saver) before setting it down. When switching hands, I treat it like some unstable element, and delicatly move it from one hand to the other.
As for battery power, as long as the wireless is off, I never notice the power level move, even after several hours of reading. With wireless on, the power meter drops 50% in about two days.
The search feature is a bit too much though. I can’t just search the book I am reading, it searches EVERYTHING on the Kindle, and gives options to search the web, at various sites (Wiki, Google, Amazon…)
Perhaps Kindle 2.0 will address these issues. I the meantime, I will enjoy my girlfriends Kindle.