How to beat Amazon’s Kindle. Slate Magazine
How to beat Amazon’s Kindle. - By Farhad Manjoo - Slate Magazine
This article caught my attention today. I wonder if/when there will be competition with Amazon’s Kindle? The ideas in this article aren’t bad I think and at the same time, the Kindle really is its own reading “ecosystem,” which will be a tough act to change.
It’s here that Kindle’s rivals will find it hard to compete. Amazon is the Internet’s master retailer, and the Kindle’s killer feature is its convenience. When you buy a Kindle, it comes pre-loaded with your Amazon account info; you don’t even need to enter your credit card number to buy any books. And then there are all those customer reviews and the amazing recommendations—not to mention the huge selection of popular, cheap titles.
How could anyone compete with that? Here’s one idea: Pull down the restrictions. The Kindle’s biggest problem is its “Hotel California”-content model: You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. Because Amazon uses its own proprietary eBook format, every book you buy is tied to the Kindle and other devices Amazon deigns to approve, like iPhones and iPod touches. Sony recently embraced the ePub document format, which—though it’s still copy-protected—works on multiple devices. This lets you buy a book for your Reader but be assured that your library won’t get deleted if you get some other gadget in the future. The ePub format also lets you hook into other sources for books—for instance, the Reader lets you borrow eBooks from your local library. Google just put 1 million public-domain books online—these will work on all devices that read ePub, which means everything but the Kindle.
