I wouldn’t mind keeping over 200 books close at hand, and I’d prefer not to need a large suitcase to do it. But Amazon’s new e-book reader is nonetheless looking less and less appealing as the analyses roll in.
Let’s start off with Kindle’s price: $399. For that amount of money, a person could buy four complete (and fancy) sets of Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets. And after the initial purchase, things don’t get any better – e-books for the Kindle cost $9.99 apiece, which appears to be a little more expensive than the average paperback.
Valleywag’s Jordan Golson compiled a whole list of other areas in which Kindle falls short. Some are realistic, others aren’t, but battery life is a biggie – a real book never needs to be plugged into a wall for two hours.
Admittedly, as writers, perhaps Golson and I aren’t the most objective sources on this issue. Still, Mary Jane Irwin and Rob Beschizza checked out the actual Kindle product page on Amazon, and discovered that it’s not doing too well, earning just 2.5 stars based on 348 reviews. Even “Elvis Presley: Paradise, Hawaiian Style” scored better than that.
New technology is often appealing, yet Kindle has done anything but catch my interest.