Stepdad vs. Kindle

My new Kindle could be a reader not just for me but also for my parents.

Stepdad has lately been complaining that with his arthritic hands, he finds it hard to hold and carry a book. He also has trouble getting out on cold days, and I thought he would enjoy being able to buy books from home. He is not a voracious reader on my level (I read over 90 books last year) but he does enjoy books.

What’s more, he plans to retire this year and become a “Snowbird”—an older Canadian who flees the cold to spend much or part of the winter in Florida. Florida Srub Jays lead easier lives than birds up north, so why not join them?

He will have more time to read, and wants to. I figured an ebook reader which does not require a computer or Internet connection would be just the thing for him as he would be staying in vacation rentals and might not always have computer access. And as a bonus, he could use the Kindle for newspapers as well as books. How nice would it be to wake up in sunny Florida to a fresh Toronto newspaper, delivered to your Kindle while you slept.

His one obstacle to getting a Kindle has been its lack of retail presence. He may be able to accept a newspaper auto-delivered to him electronically in time for his morning coffee, but he cannot accept spending hard money on something from the internet that he has never touched or seen. So I thought my Craigslist Kindle score would be a perfect remedy. I could enjoy the Kindle while he dithers for another half a year, and if he decides he likes it, I could buy myself the next model when it comes out and give him mine. He seemed amenable to this idea and was eager to see my new Kindle and try it out for himself.

The initial hands-on

When I first saw the Kindle buttons, I was worried he would have trouble with them. The letter keys are small and the five-way controller requires a certain precision at times. I do think there is perhaps an untapped niche which remains in the ebook hardware market for a reader optimized for older readers. But Stepdad dove in with reasonable enthusiasm and, once a book had been selected for him, he used the next and previous buttons, unprompted, to make his way through. The unit seemed to fit comfortably in his hands and he had no difficulties maintaining a secure hold on it. He tested the Kindle both in the Amazon official leather case and without it, and preferred it with the case because the fuzzy backing gave him some extra traction; he was worried he would drop it.

He found the screen quite readable and said he was surprised at how good it was and how much like a real book it seemed. He asked about using a booklight with it (I explained this was possible) and asked how it looked when reading in sunlight. He briefly played with the font sizes and seemed to appreciate this feature.

The Amazon store

He wanted to check out the Amazon store. His condo is in one of those weird urban Bermuda triangles where too many satellite dishes kill all the wireless signals, so when I saw the bar light up very briefly, I hustled him out of the book he was reading and showed him how to access the store.

Here was where the limitations of his hands became a bit of an issue: when I prompted him to type in the name of a book, he asked me to suggest “a short name” for him to try, and he needed to lay the Kindle flat and use both hands to manipulate the five-way controller to download the sample. He did say he thinks it will be fine once he is used to it; certainly the day to day operation (turning it on, reading a book) was fine for him.

If he needed help loading up content from time to time, he could have it. But I do think that the buttons may turn out to be an issue for him.

I also showed him a newspaper (I had bought one issue as a sample to play around with) and I think that might be something which would interest him. We didn’t spend too much time on this, though. I was just hoping to let him have a play with the Kindle and get used to the idea so he could start thinking about whether he wanted one.

Some lingering concerns

Under normal circumstances, I don’t think my parents read enough to justify the cost of the Kindle. But I can see someone like my stepfather, who has mobility issues with his hands, finding this a worthwhile investment the same way one might buy a cane or a hearing aid. I know he will get pleasure out of it. And in fact, the cost did not seem to be an issue with him and he appeared quite prepared to spend the money if he decided that he wanted it. He had some concerns, and I was surprised at how astute he was about going for the Kindle’s weak points, given that he is a non-techie with no previous experience reading ebooks.

1) He asked about sharing books with my mother. He was worried that if he read a book and then wanted to let her read it, he would have to let her have the Kindle and then what would he read on while she had it? I explained that we could get her a Kindle too and they could share books on their account.

2) This led him to the realization that ‘having an account’ is part of the deal here, and he immediately asked me what that meant and if Amazon was going to spy on his books and prevent him from loaning them to my mother. I told him it didn’t quite work that way. But yes, technically, Amazon could know what books he has and what devices they are loaded onto.

3) Then he asked what would happen if his brother, a fellow Snowbird and arthritis sufferer, bought a Kindle too. Could he share the books? When I explained the potential snag here (yes, if you add him to your account; but that would mean he could spend your money with it), he matter-of-factly pointed out that if he had a paper book, he could give it to whomever he wanted to.

4) He was concerned about theft. Specifically, that if he left a paperback novel on the deck chair while he hopped into the swimming pool and somebody stole it, he’d only be out about $8. But if he left out the Kindle and it got snatched, he would be pretty upset.

5) The formats, and the idea of being ‘locked in’ to the Amazon store did not concern him. He is not the type to re-read a book and is not concerned with how accessible a title might be to him 25 years down the road. But he did ask about reading library books.

Finally, he seemed to believe that I am endowed with a superior knowledge (this may be true, for now, in this one arena but I certainly think he can learn) and kept asking ‘but could *I* do this?’ every time I showed him something. When he got his camera, I remember him taking a series of classes at the camera store to get himself up to speed. When he got a computer, someone came over to help him set it up. The Kindle, having no retail presence, might suffer with his demographic because a lot of people his age do share his views about purchasing and many would never think to buy something like this unless they could go somewhere and see it first.

To reach this market, absent a techie like me to lead the horse to the water, they’ll need to set up some retail partnerships so people like him can see the readers in action and touch and look before they buy. They’ll need to work out a sensible way to allow the degree of ‘sharing’ that an average person might expect (maybe a ‘one device at a time’ sort of thing where I can loan it, but I lose access to it myself while it is out) and they will need to persuade people that it really isn’t that hard and they don’t need their child/nephew/IT friend to help them just read a book.

And finally, they need to make not just more devices, but different ones. We need a reader optimized for kids (plastic screen, stylus-based interface to let them touch and point at words, pared-down feature set to lower cost and increase independence) and one optimized for older people (large buttons, many font choices, text to speech). I am excited to see what the future will bring to the ebook market and hope that my stepfather finds the perfect device for him.

Related: Past TeleRead items on older adults and ebooks.