Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age

As I wrote in a previous post, I now own an Amazon Kindle and have been using it for the past couple of weeks.

In terms of the device itself, it’s very light and sleek (without, that is, the cover). The cover, I think, tries to make the Kindle look/feel like it’s either a moleskin journal or a hardback book, and yet it’s neither.

Once free of the cover, the Kindle feels great to hold is more than comfortable to read with one hand (either one). Plus, turning the page with the tip of a finger, or thumb, of the hand you’re holding the device with is a cinch. I had perfected how to do this with paperbacks years ago — in my pre iPod days — when I lived in Manhattan and would read on the subways during my commute, always having to hold onto my book with one hand and the subway pole with the other. I’m glad to see that the skill is again coming in handy.

However, as comfortable as the device feels in the hand, the “page” (meaning, the screen), rather than being truly white, is a kind of non-fat milk gray. In fact, since it’s contrasted with the matte white of the Kindle itself, the screen looks even grayer than it probably is. True, I’ve read plenty of books in my time that were printed on cheap, almost newsprint paper, which was both coarse to the touch and hardly white, so I’m hardly expecting the screen to be bone-white. But the “slate gray Victorian sky” tone of the Kindle screen doesn’t at all match the ultra crisp resolution found either an iPhone or a Pocket PC. And, at times, I find this to be a distraction.

In terms of how words look on the screen, I thought they looked great; text is very easy to read, and I didn’t mind having to have light in order to see the screen (since it’s not backlit, like a Blackberry or iPod). And changing the font size is really easy, and something I did often (like, at night — if I’m tired — I’ll make the font bigger and easier to read). But I also kept wanting to change the font itself. Why not offer a number of different fonts to choose from? That should be a setting the consumer can change as easily as the size of the font.

Another display issue that bothered me was the “ghosting” of the type: the fact that the words from the previous page seem to sort of hover on the screen even after you’ve changed the page. This makes the Kindle perennially feel like an old monitor with a Windows logo burned into the screen. I realize that this is an inherent design element/flaw with the eInk technology, and isn’t really the fault of the Kindle itself, but for me it’s a bit of a distraction. Is there really no getting rid of this?

One thing that I don’t mind about the Kindle is that it’s an extra device. I used to think that I wanted an integrated device — one thing that did everything — and that I wouldn’t want to carry around yet another device or gadget. But I actually like the fact that the Kindle is (more or less) just a device for the reading of content. Maybe this harkens back to the fact that every book is a destination; you get into bed and pick up a book because you want to read. You don’t pick up a book to take pictures, record video or get your voicemail. So the fact that I don’t use the Kindle to play solitaire is fine with me. True, that means I can’t read something if I leave the house and have just my cell phone in my back pocket. But then again, a cell phone screen is too small, and most books are too big, so carrying a Kindle seems the right compromise.

Besides, I tend to get weary when it comes to loading down devices with too many uses and bits of software; sooner or later, it’s going to get overloaded and crash. Or else the device will get so far removed from its original purpose that it’ll end up doing two things poorly instead of excelling at one (this reminds me of the New Yorker cartoon where a disgruntled customer in a bookstore says to a sales person, “No caffe latte? And you call yourself a bookstore?”). I’m starting to see this with the iPhone and iTouch. People are going crazy for the all of those applications, but each one (not to mention the music videos, movies and TV shows that iTunes now sells), is taking precious bits of memory. I have a 16GB iPod iTouch, and 18,000 songs on my computer at home. The last thing in the world I’m going to do is have half a dozen silly applications on my iPod that take away from my music collection (more Captain Beefheart, less Crash Bandicoot). It doesn’t make much sense to me to carry around an iPod and have it be PSP. So when it comes to storing books and text — for now — I’m fine carrying around a specialized device.