WANTED: Kindleville Curator

The Kindleville blog is now over a year old but I've become disappointed with Amazon's lack of advancement and development of the Kindle platform. I was hoping to see new features by now (what's the point of the "Experimental" page if they're never going to enhance or add to it?) as well as some creative new content options (book subscriptions, anyone?).

Then there's the fact that the magazine area has been pretty much left for dead (22 magazines and very few of the big ones). Heck, I even had to go back to BusinessWeek with my tail between my legs and start a new print subscription; I waited and waited but there's still no sign BusinessWeek (or many of the other major rags) will ever make it to the Kindle.

Enough of my whining though. The real reason for this post is to see if there's anyone out there who would like to become the new author of Kindleville. I'm looking for someone who's still passionate about the device and will commit to 3-5 good, solid posts every week. If that's too much to ask from one person maybe there are a few of you out there who could work as a team on it.

My interest in the Kindle is waning but I'd like to see Kindleville live on as a resource for the community. It's still the #1 blog being pushed out by the KindleFeeder service, ranking ahead of such heavyweights as The Huffington Post, The New York Times, Lifehacker, Wired's Top Stories and yes, even Amazon's very own Kindle blog. Plus, if Amazon finally wakes up and delivers something breathtaking with Kindle 2.0 I might just be back...but I'm not holding my breath.

So how about it? Is there anyone out there who'd like to take this on? I'll make it simple. You'd just write the posts, email them to me and I'll make sure they get loaded. You'll earn as much money as I have from the blog...nothing...but it's all about the community and a chance to get more visibility for you and your gift for writing.

If you're interested, send me an email message and I'll hook up with you shortly.

P.S. -- I'm not abandoning the blogosphere. I'm still quite passionate about my Publishing 2020 blog and, perhaps more importantly, I'm about to pour a lot of effort into a brand new blog I'm about to launch for the iPhone. It will be called iBlogiPhone.com and I plan to start working on it later today.

What Would You Think of a Radiohead Experiment on the Kindle?

This is another one of those rare instances where I'm cross-linking between my own blogs. I just wrote this post on my Publishing 2020 blog but as Kindle owners/fans I'd like to get your input on it too.

If you do have a comment to make, I ask that you write it on the 2020 blog, not here. Thanks!

Where's My New York Times?!

I've been subscribing to The New York Times on my Kindle for several months now and I look forward to curling up with it every night. Imagine my disappointment when I brought my Kindle downstairs last night and couldn't find the latest issue. I figured maybe something went awry with the wireless connection, so I pressed "Check for new items" but still no Saturday edition.

Next step: Shutting down and rebooting. No dice. Last option: using my handy-dandy paperclip and resetting the darned thing. Still no luck.

Interestingly, I went into the Content Manager a few minutes later to remove some old issues and guess what I found: Saturday's issue was there waiting for me to delete it. I hopped back to the home screen but it still wasn't there, so I found myself in the odd position of being able to delete it but not read it.

I sent a message to Amazon's support team and all they could say is "we've reviewed your account...we're unable to determine a problem with your subscription...and the latest issue of The New York Times should have downloaded to your Kindle." They also suggested I contact customer support via a toll-free number if I'm still having problems.

How lame is that? Regardless of what their system might tell them, Saturday's paper was not available for me to read on my Kindle. One obvious step they could have taken (but didn't) is simply to resent it to me. Amazon, really, you guys might want to add this simple step to your customer support arsenal. I'm stunned that you haven't already, given the attention to detail you usually pay to this sort of thing.

I've got to admit yesterday felt like one of those times years ago when the paperboy simply missed your house. You'd think that sort of thing wouldn't happen with today's technologies...

The good news is the Sunday edition was right there on my Kindle waiting for me.

USA Today vs. The New York Times

I've been paying $13.99/month for The New York Times on my Kindle for several months now and I love it. When I saw USA Today was coming to the Kindle I was curious, so I signed up for a 14-day trial. I'm less than a week into it and getting ready to shut it down.

My curiosity stemmed from the highly visual, full-color design USA Today features in print and how it would be rendered on a monochrome device. So while the lack of USA Today's visual appeal on the Kindle wasn't exactly surprising it's more disappointing than you might think. My exposure to USA Today is typically limited to road trips since it's often the preferred newspaper at many hotels. I enjoy seeing all the colorful images, charts, graphs, etc. They're absent from the Kindle edition and you can't help notice it on every page.

How about the content itself? I never realized how much personality the Times has vs. USA Today till I compared both on the Kindle. So while the editorials from the Times shine in print or e-format, USA Today just doesn't seem to have the same level of insightful commentary, leaving me to feel USA Today loses a lot when it loses the color/imagery. I also like scanning the "news from every state" that appears in the print edition. I usually head to states I've lived in (Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana) and skip the rest. That's pretty easy to do in print but not so much on the Kindle. They're sorted alphabetically (just like the print version), so in order to get to Indiana I have to scroll through every state from Alabama through Illinois before I get there. Surely there's a more efficient way of presenting this sort of content in e-format!

Then there's the annoying fact that USA Today is a weekday-only publication. Sure, they distribute that Friday edition with "weekend coverage," but it's not the same as getting a completely new issue on Saturday and Sunday. I'm very much looking forward to reading the Sunday Times later tonight...good luck getting that feeling from a USA Today subscription. Maybe that's why Amazon offers USA Today at a slightly lower price than the Times ($11.99 vs. $13.99). IMHO, the Times is worth every bit of that additional $2/month charge.

Memo to Jeff Bezos

Dear Jeff,

As 2008 comes to a close I find I'm less of a Kindle advocate than I was earlier in the year. My new iPhone is partially to blame. After all, it's one of the reasons I wrote this critical post on my other blog yesterday. It's not just about the iPhone though. Amazon is uniquely positioned to run away with the e-reader market, but the Kindle appears to be hampered by a lack of strategy and vision.

I'm not talking about the poor physical design; I'm way past the point of being critical there. No, what I'm talking about are five key issues that have caused me to abandon plans for a Kindle 2.0 purchase in 2009 (or whenever it comes out):

1. Proprietary Model -- Come on, Jeff. It's almost 2009 and you're locked in with this non-industry standard content format. Have you asked any publishers how hard it is for them to convert their content to your format, especially the books with illustrations, maps, code, etc.? Would it kill you to support the EPUB format?

2. Lack of an Innovative Content Pricing Model -- This one bugs me the most. OK, you've taken the bold step of offering most titles for $9.99. Hooray. That happened more than a year ago though and it's way past time to come up with some new, creative pricing models. How about a monthly all-you-can-eat program? Or a discount on the device if I promise to buy x books in the first 12 months? Have you considered bundling magazines or newspapers with books? What about all those physical books I've bought from you over the years? Why can't I get a discount on the Kindle editions of those titles? What about bundling Kindle editions with print books? The possibilities are endless but the offerings have been non-existent. Where's the vision here?

3. No Brick-and-Mortar Presence -- Sure, Amazon is the king of online commerce but I think an e-only Kindle approach is killing the Kindle's potential visibility. I can't tell you how many friends and family members I know who've never heard of the Kindle...and I'm talking about people who regularly shop on Amazon! OK, the retort here is that you're out-of-stock, so you don't need any more visibility (see item #5). I hope that's not how you feel though. You've got a product with mass appeal potential but you'll never get there if (a) they don't know about it and (b) they can't touch and test drive it.

4. High Price -- This ties in with #2 above but I think it's important to talk not only about content pricing models but the price of the device itself. You're probably tired of hearing it but you need to think more like the cell phone industry. Once you get those pesky inventory management issues resolved, find a way to sell the product for $100 or less. Strip out some features. That's OK, but as long as the price of entry is $300+ the Kindle will always be positioned as a quirky gadget for people with too much disposable income. And given current economic conditions, how many of your prospective customers would describe themselves as having too much disposable income?

5. Poor Inventory Management -- I suppose I shouldn't care too much about this one, especially since I already have a Kindle, but I think it's a symptom of a larger problem. How do you manage to go out-of-stock two holiday seasons in a row?! Yeah, I know...Oprah's to blame, but didn't you see that coming? Others have said it was a ploy to flush through the existing inventory and start 2009 with the new version (Kindle 2.0). Whatever. Why is it that when Nintendo runs out of Wii's it generates even more buzz but when Amazon runs out of Kindles it reeks of incompetence?

Jeff, I'm a huge fan of Amazon and I still read from my Kindle each and every day. I have to admit that the iPhone and the rapidly growing number of books and book apps for it are starting to encroach in my "Kindle time" though. Now that I own both an iPhone and a Kindle I couldn't possibly recommend the latter to owners of the former. Why spend $300+ on a limited functionality device, especially with all the major flaws noted above?

I used to think Amazon could take their time and the Kindle could survive any number of missteps. The iPhone has changed the game though and Google's Android as well as a host of other knock-offs will ensure we'll never again be limited to just the apps/features that initially came on the phone. This can only hurt the Kindle's overall appeal. I hope you and your team have something truly remarkable in the works for Kindle 2.0. More of the same just won't cut it.

Thanks for listening to me,
Joe
(Yeah, I know Bezos will never see this, but it's New Year's Eve, so let me dream a bit, OK?)

Search Activity: Kindle vs. Sony Reader

Google Trends is one of my favorite analysis tools, and it's totally free. It can tell you how popular a search term is and it's particularly useful when comparing two or more related phrases.

Every so often I like to compare the phrase "Amazon Kindle" with "Sony Reader" to see who's winning the search battle. You can see for yourself by either clicking the image to the left or clicking here to see the full results on Google Trends.

No matter how you look at it, you'll notice two things. First, and it's old news, but the Kindle took an early but short-lived lead in search activity when it first hit the scene 13 months ago. It's been trailing the Reader ever since, but briefly surged back ahead earlier in the fourth calendar quarter, right about the time Oprah went ga-ga over it...which brings me to the second point: as we got further into the holiday shopping season, while Amazon has been out-of-stock, the Reader has opened up a huge lead over the Kindle in search activity.

If this metric is at all meaningful, and I tend to believe it is, Amazon just keeps shooting themselves in the foot with these poorly timed out-of-stock situations. Clearly there's a pretty strong (and growing) interest in the Sony Reader.

Kindles on Craigslist

The Kindle is still sold out on Amazon so where can you go to buy one? eBay and Craigslist, of course. I was poking around on Craigslist this morning and noticed some interesting pricing tendencies...

If you look in my home state of Indiana, you'll find people selling Kindles on Craigslist for $300-$400. That sounds fairly reasonable given the current situation. If you head out to the San Francisco area you'll find more of them available but the typical price goes up to $400-$500. But if you go to the home of the Kindle, Seattle, you'll see more up around $500 and even $600 (with a leather messenger bag).

Funny how the same device is valued at a higher resale price in the more expensive regions of the country. If I were in the market I'd head straight to the Craigslist site for Mississippi and have it shipped to me. Bad example...if you search for "Kindle" in the Gulfport/Biloxi area of Craigslist you come up empty...insert your own joke here... You get the point though.