• by adam , February 11, 2008

A month ago, the New York Times asked him what he thought about Amazon.com's Kindle, a fancy-schmancy eBook reader. Steve Jobs answered:

"Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don't read anymore (full article here).

I played with a Kindle last week. The interface could be more user friendly, but the first words that come to mind are "pretty cool," NOT: "I'd never buy one." Remember the first time you figured out that holding a magnet near a television would magically turn it green? Just a glance at the "electric paper" screen gave me a lot of destructive ideas about how turn it into a science experiment. Really, it's cool.

I recently finished reading a paper copy of Moby Dick - a venture I began with an eBook copy. After squinting through fifteen chapters (there are 135), my eyes dried up, cursed my birth, and commanded me to lug around the paper version. As a result, the Kindle's eye-appeal would have been a good alternative if it didn't cost 12 tanks of gas ($33.33 X 12 = $400).

Now, reader, is when you think: "Jobs wasn't talking about nerds that read books like you. He was talking about the Kindle being an unprofitable venture because MOST people don't read."

People might not read, but they buy books:

"TRENDS 2007 estimates that total publishers' net revenues in 2006 reached $35.69 billion, up 3.2 percent over 2005's total, and that unit sales in 2006 exceeded 3.1 billion" (from "Book Industry Study Group").

So, maybe the Kindle is not "flawed at the top." It's a cool idea, just too expensive ($400) - for now.