Initially, as with most new tech gadgets, I didn’t understand how this device was any different from a small portable internet thing, like an iphone or a blackberry, or anything else. As far as books go, I much prefer to read them in 3-D. But then, somebody raved about how with the Kindle, you can lie in bed and read without your arms getting tired. And I thought, well, that alone is reason enough to want one. Then, I thought about backpacking and how toting books (and finding good English-language books) was a huge hassle, and thought, well, that’s a really good reason to want one.
But then I looked at the offerings on Amazon, and they hardly had any of the titles on my book list. Meanwhile, titles are around $10, and I’ve been a devoted library user for a couple of years now. With the library system, the selection is much, much better and it’s entirely free. The only annoying part is, I can’t make notes in the margins and anything in the book I might want to refer to later for whatever reason, I have to type out before I return it. With the Kindle, I suppose that would not be a problem, although I don’t recall if there’s a feature where you can make margin notes, but I’m sure if there isn’t, there will be eventually. So, I think I’d probably like to have one, once they expand the selection of available titles.
However, today I read this:
As widely reported, Amazon.com opened the floodgates last week, making it easy for weblogs to get on Kindle. Like their Marketplace-model, this is an easy way for them to make money as the middleman, at little cost and trouble: as they take a whopping 70% of the subscription price Kindle owners are willing to pay for this content — a price Amazon reserves the right to set (i.e. no giving away your blog for free or at a token price) — they should fare fairly well, even if not too many people subscribe.
I really can’t see paying to read blogs on a Kindle that I already read for free all day long on the computer (or portable internet device of any other type other than the Kindle). There’s been a disturbing amount of consensus lately (amongst All Them who blog and so forth) that the honeyed days of bountiful free online content are coming rapidly to an end, and that – however incrementally - providers are going to start charging for content. Perish the thought.
Honestly, I love blogs, but they’re rather an unhealthy and time-consuming addiction for me. If my free supply were to be cut off, I don’t think I would pay for it – first of all, because I rarely pay for anything ever (the only time I ever listened to music was during the brief Napster window), and secondly, because I really shouldn’t be spending so much time reading blogs in the first place. It’s good to keep abreast of current events, but I ought to be reading books, or writing, or figuring out why my life is lazily whirling in an eddy. Plus, once you’ve paid for something, it starts to feel like a guilty obligation, as anyone who’s ever watched their New Yorkers pile up knows. I don’t subscribe to magazines anymore, because the stacks of them are a constant reprove, and if I paid for online content, unread posts would be the same.
On the plus side, I’ve noticed that a lot of blogs I subscribe to in my RSS feed that previously only put the title of posts and a short summary line in the feed have switched to displaying entire posts in the feed, which I much, much prefer. As the blog I linked to above explains, this is likely because they are preparing to offer themselves up to Kindle. Well, whatever. I’ll keep flipping through my RSS as long as it’s free and easy to do so.
And when things change, they change.
