The Kindle 60 days of use.
So far I have now had my Kindle almost 60 days, that should constitute an acceptable period of time to reflect on the devices shortcomings and advantages. First let me say this piece may not be as positive as I had hoped when I planed on writing this a month ago, the new has worn off and my Kindle is now yet another tool I use.
I just returned from a vacation, thus the extended absence here, and I have to say I unfortunately only used my Kindle once during my trip. Now I did not use any other book at all, other that an atlas in conjunction with my GPS, but my iPod still got the lion share of use in the goings and comings of the trip in the plane.
In general my Kindle has been a huge disappointment in the area of replacing my standard Bible as there just is no real use of the book 2.0 hypertext technology by any of the major translations. In general reading it for the sake of reading is quite good, but using it in a class where you are hopping around a great deal you quickly get frustrated as I am quite comfortable moving between books in the Bible and the Kindle just has no translations that allow for that method o use well as of yet. I have hopes there will be sooner than later.
Another difficulty on this front is the very real, it has happened to me twice, gasp, failure of power. If your going to use it, just get used to plugging it in nightly before you go to bed and then this will never happen to you. But try and push it 3 days and you may be in for trouble if you use the wireless at all. For all the fear that this causes when your not with your charger I suspect it won’t happen to me again for quite some time as I have adapted to charging it just like my phone.
The actual experience of reading is still my biggest reason for using the kindle, I can sit and breeze through a book in record time with little awareness of the device at all. I have moved to a font setting of 3 and find it very readable and not to large as to make page turning to frequent, but not as small as 2 where I need my glasses for sure. Setting 1, forget about it.
How are you after a couple of months of use? I am disappointed in the lack of real news from Amazon, I have seen a comment saying as a publicly trading company they can’t really say how shipping is going due to the impact it might have on their stock. But surely others could comment, I had hoped my hometown newspaper would hop on board, but as o now the Dallas Morning news or the Fort Worth Star Telegram are both no shows.
So for now my Kindle has replaced my need for any Paper back or hard back I have thus far looked for. I am about to test that on a Harry Turtledove book called the “Guns of the South” - NO GO… Although there are 34 books from the author available, for some reason that one is not. I got it from a fellow in passing and frankly I had hoped to get it on the Kindle to avoid reading the grimy stained book that I was so generously offered from the fellow. Oh well, I still have 3 books not started that are awaiting my attention, but I wish there were some way to inquire as to if there were any conversion in the works. Despite a smaller library size, the Kindle is still by far the easiest on my eyes reading experience I have, so I am still pleased to have one while others are still waiting.
Filed under: Kindle
I’m an author who’s hoping the Kindle can democratize the publishing industry. Now that the industry is dominated by vertically-integrated publishing megaconglomerates who are only interested in books that can turn reliable, impressive profits, there’s no place for the book equivalent of an indie film or indie band.
POD and self-pub are stigmatized and also totally shut out of the national book distribution networks, but with ebooks authors can bypass publishers and distributors entirely to get their work directly to the reader. I’m having some success with my Kindle-edition novel ‘Snow Ball’, but I’m having trouble finding ways to promote it or raise its profile since there seems to be no ‘Booklist’ or ‘Publishers Weekly’ targeted specifically to the Kindle (yet).
I’m trying to get Kindle bloggers to review free copies in the meantime. Might you be interested? I entered a link to a free excerpt from the novel under ‘website’ on this form (http://www.thinkydink.com/snowballexcerpt.pdf), if you’d be willing to take a look at it. Thanks!
- April
I have had my Kindle since last December and while I love it for leisure reading I have found it to be burdensome when I am reading for my work. I often write notes in my margins, etc. and the inability to do this in an efficient way (that would draw my attention back to the passage) has caused me to stop ordering work related materials for my Kindle. I also miss the inability to quickly move through the text. While I have resorted to using my Kindle for recreational reading only, I can’t abandon my hope that I merely need to find news ways to read and then I’ll be able to use it for everything.
On the other hand, I love it for leisure reading and I never leave without my Kindle. I, too, learned the hard way that I need to charge every night, but in spite of that one time incident, I love the sample chapters and found that I have read more books on this summer break than I have in the last two years!
It is great to be able to finish a book at the beach and then start on a new one…no need to travel to the bookstore!