Woo hoo! My Kindle arrived safe and sound last night. Amazon did a great job with the packaging, making opening up the Kindle a fun experience. Similar to all of Apple's packaging, it was minimal, well thought-out, and every part had a purpose.
Immediately, I was impressed. Set-up was instantaneous and so easy. The wireless worked perfectly and was surprisingly quick. It was very easy to search for books, see bestseller lists, and Amazon's recommendations for me were there, too.
I love the sample option, where you can download the first chapter of a book for free, read it, and then decide if you'd like to purchase the book. I downloaded several first chapters, read one, and of course, bought the book.
Although bestsellers are $9.99, there are also a lot of bargains to be had . . . classics are a couple dollars and there's free stuff too.
Holding the device and reading pages felt extremely natural.
This one's a keeper.
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3 comments:
I appreciate you posting this. I'd never really looked at the Kindles because I don't like reading on a computer screen and I just assumed the Kindle screen would be like a computer screen. I watched the informational video and then forwarded the link to my mom, as this seems like something both she and I would enjoy.
That said, the cost of the reader + the downloads is the biggest hurdle for me. I use the library almost exclusively for my reading materials, and when I want to actually buy a book I try to wait until I have books to sell back so I can use store credit for my new purchases. It would be nice if amazon had an option where, for a flat monthly fee, you could read however many books you want to (similar to Netflix's instant view feature). Our library's downloaded audio books "expire" after two weeks (you can no longer access them on your computer), and then you have to check the book out again. Seems like amazon could implement something similar with their Kindles.
Anyhoo, thanks for the info about the Kindle 2! I may end up putting this on my birthday wish list this year =).
AND, I would bet there's going to be a whole bunch of authors publishing direct to Kindle, now that it's starting to take. I looked into it, and there's a WAY easy interface to publish immediately, and set your own price, still having it listed through Amazon. OH! We should tell MOM!!!
Yeah, one of my friends at work published a book that was basically a cut/paste of all of the emails he sent as updates to friends/family when he was abroad for a year. He charges less than a dollar for the book and gets 25 cents a sell. The funny thing is that he doesn't get a royalty check from amazon until he reaches $10 . . . who knows when that's going to happen!
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