Amazon Kindle The Fire. Ebooks Go Mainstream.

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• Wow, you're fast, Joanna.

  I "almost" bought myself a Kindle in September, but stopped at the last moment. Glad I did :) will go for Kindle Touch now.

  You're so right. The excitement around e-book market is growing. I had a few folks only this week telling me that they're just about to buy a Kindle.

  I just pray that the fellow writers stop, think and edit the hell out of their books before rushing to publish.

  • ooh yes, Kindle touch looks good! I had just replaced my 2 year old with a new one a few months ago and am almost looking forward to the next incarnation. Most people who pick up a Kindle touch the screen so it seems like a great evolution.
    on the publishing thing, as I said above, it still needs to be a good market. Kindle users are ruthless with deleting samples, so bad editing will get picked up quickly.

• Thank you Joanna, I already have 6 books on kindle and is in the process to put a 7 th up in days. T

  • I'm jealous :) in a good way. That's where I need to get to but it's going to take some time. My 2nd is only in first draft, but I feel very happy that it's all heading in the right direction and more confident that sales will grow. I'm also waiting for India to explode with uptake based on lower initial price.

• Hi Joanna, I'm a pretty new subscriber here. A couple of thoughts on this post. I was going to make a wise crack about your "biggest entertainment expense" comment until I remembered I also have a Kindle filled with samples and books. And I recently tried to loan a couple of my paperbacks to a friend and he said, "no way, it's Kindle from this point forward for me." This guy usually reads a couple of books a week.

  I agree the price point on the Kindle is a big deal. I think the willingness to convert to eBooks is going to climb faster with a $79 Kindle. I'm just not sure it'll be meteoric. iPods and music delivery was and is different. The digital medium of delivery for music made tons of people instant converts. There wasn't an appreciable segment saying, "Oh, I just love my CDs too much."

  I sense conversions are just not happening as dramatically with the iPad or the Kindle. Some, perhaps a good percentage, are having instant conversions, but I don't sense it's a overwhelming as it was (and is) with music.

  • Hi Stan, thanks for your comment, I always appreciate new people leaving their mark! Perhaps I have been living this for 2 years now and seen the rise and rise but no tipping point, and this feels like a tipping point! I may well be wrong, but the excitement in the community is tangible. I am all about sharing passion so thought I would put myself out there with this post.
    I also think this is not the last drop in price - $79 this year - will it be free with subscription model next year? What about a $20 Kindle? so even if it's not this Christmas, it's got to be soon.

    Thanks so much, Joanna

    • Hi Joanna, I think it's great that you're passionate about eBooks. I've loved eBooks from way back before there were any readers and all we had was PDF or even "doc" versions of a book. We've come a long way since then!

      Well, I have mixed feelings about this. I didn't mind leaving CDs behind and having all of my music on my computer, iPod, iPhone. But, as much as I love my Kindle, I still buy books and love reading them the old-fashioned way.

      20-30 years from now, printed books may no longer be a viable option for most publishers. Wow, would that be a strange thing.

• Cool that you published this so quickly!

  I couldn't agree with you more ... ebooks ARE the future, and they're here now.

  I bought a Kindle about six months ago. Nice as it is, I have a few caveats ...

  * Novels and "linear books" (where you read from cover to cover) are GREAT on the Kindle - It remembers where you last read to, etc.

  * How To and Reference books are inferior on the Kindle - I bought several books where I need to quickly jump around from one section to another. In my experience, these books are MUCH more difficult to navigate than their paper counterparts. Amazon and/ or Apple (though I have tried out iBook yet, maybe it's better) needs to come up with a much better way to "jump around" a book on a screen.

  In both cases where I bought the Kindle book first (Strength for Life - a workout book) and The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published (a reference/ how-to book), I got so frustrated with the Kindle experience that I bought the paper versions. Only rarely do I reference the Kindle versions of these.

  Hopefully Amazon and Apple will address these (what I consider to be) very serious shortcomings.

  ~Doug

  • Hi Doug,
    They have improved things every release so this will have to be addressed. Do you have the Kindle DX which I believe was designed for reference books/ the academic market?
    I had read that California was switching to using Kindles for textbooks so this must be being looked at. I have found that as long as the books have a linked table of contents, it works ok and my husband has his coding books on Kindle app for PC at work and loves it - instant reference library on the go.
    But I do see your point. I do buy mainly narrative fiction, business books etc.

  • I agree with your point, Doug, navigation in what I will loosely refer to as jump-around books is a pest. I've only had my Kindle two months, so I'm hoping I might get better at it in time. One thing they really need is a Table of Contents button. Too many steps to get to it. Plus in a jump-around book, the first thing that comes up needs to be the Table of Contents, not page 1, I reckon.

• Like Austin, I was just about to order a Kindle a couple of weeks ago. But I thought about other things I could spend that money on and held off. However, at $79, I just might jump in there. Just as you said, Johanna, I have to see for myself what it's all about.

  Besides, I have watched sales of physical books on my websites plummet over time. I don't expect that trend to change. It's time for me to get a Kindle in order to keep up with my readers.

  • Great Marie! I'm so glad you're taking the plunge and you won't regret it. I have had authors who haven't even looked at what their book looks like on the Kindle. There are formatting errors they didn't know about. That's one angle .. then there is the endless pleasure of reading :)

• I was skeptical about Ereaders at first. Then I bought a Kindle to evaluate and have been impressed ever since. My wife was impressed, too, and bought a Nook Touch. My eldest son liked the Nook Touch and so we bought him one.

  When I found out about the Fire I was again skeptical. I see iPads so often handed to kids to play simple games on. But the Fire, at $199, might be a worthwhile gadget. The big question on my mind is whether it will read only Kindle format books or, being Android-based, will it run the Nook reader too? I'm sure the same issues of battery drain, eye-strain, and bright-lights will apply to Fire, but the price and thus far reported functionality might be enough to offset the inherent shortcomings. We shall see. ;)

  • we shall indeed see - the price is amazing considering the ipad is $1000 (Aussie dollar when I bought one)
    I'm hoping this price point will win over the final scepticism - although England is a very negative country about these types of things. We'll see how it plays out.

• What a great time to be an author !! A true golden age for publishing and sharing knowledge and edutainment :-)

  • sure is :)

• I got my Kindle in January and was skeptical. I downloaded some free ebooks and got around to reading the first one a couple months later. I've been pleasantly surprised by how well it works. I still have a soft spot for paper but economics and selection will ensure the dominance of ebooks in the future. Why pay $20 or more for a book when you can get so many great ones for under $3 (or often under $1) for the Kindle?

  • I'm glad you're a convert DL - once you're used to it, I think people really switch. Paper books become used for another purpose e.g. for longevity, or reference, or for best loved, or art.

    • Coincidentally, I was talking to my son the rocket scientist (literally) last night. He was adamant that ebooks were a fad and would never supplant paper books. I think he's wrong about this but I was surprised by his level of distaste for the idea of ebooks. I have several friends with similar attitudes but I figured that was because they were old poops like me. Interesting. I may need to publish paper versions of my stuff even though the cost I'd have to charge disturbs me.

• This is amazing . . . figures I just bought a kindle this summer because I grew tired of waiting for them to catch up with the nook. The touch screen is the way to go and if you've got a book to publish then there's no better way to "test" out your market.

  I didn't think I'd like reading on the kindle, but have found it quite enjoyable.

  • Thanks Lisa - I think many people think it will hurt the eyes etc but it is so much better than an iPad - and it's a purely reading device which is awesome for readers! I want a touchscreen as well now - my gadget desire is rising :)

• I am beyond excited at this announcement. Did you know the Wall Street Journal is expecting 4-5 million Kindle Fire tablets (the color one) to sell before the year ends? That doesn't even count the $79 version.

  As a writer and a publisher of children's books, I've felt a little left out in the last few months. Kids books simply didn't have a chance at the bestseller charts because the device wasn't there. Now it is and we are ready with 2 (almost 4) of my own books and 3 others by an amazing author/illustrator. We've got another dozen projects in the queue for 2012. Yay Kindle!

  • wow! Calee, that's amazing, a dozen projects waiting for the right device. You must be stoked that this is taking off. It feels like the last 2 years of waiting is paying off, and being on the crest of the wave... exciting times, I wish you all the best for your books.