Stephen King Reviews the Kindle

[Richard Kaufman]

Look Here for author Stephen King's thoughts on reading ebooks on Amazon's Kindle:
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20172616,00.html

[Cugel]

I'm no fan of .pdf books and lectures notes downloaded to your PC laptop or palm pilot because it usually means lower quality (especially with many of the half-assed lecture notes we've seen)... but this has me intrigued. The view quality and the dimensions make it seem like something I could imagine reading on the lounge or at bedtime.

On the other hand, I expect that if there is a greater trend to publish online it will either mean that authors make less money due to piracy or they'll make more (if the piracy thing is manageable) through direct selling from their own sites.

King can afford to be relaxed about it of course - he's made his dough and had real books published.

I think that latter issue is an important element for some authors. There's a thrill to being able to hold a real honest to god book with your name on it.

[Eoin O'hare]

Here is a review with a little more depth. LINK

[Alexander Crawford]

The Kindle isn't much good for the magic world because it doesn't read PDF format.
I recommend you look at The Iliad from http://www.irextechnologies.com/
It's expensive because it doesn't have the volume sales of the Amazon Kindle or the cross-subsidy from ebook sales, particularly so for USD earners at the current exchange rate, but I can highly recommend it if you can afford it.

With content available from Racherbaumer, Wasshauber et al, you'll need a big CF card to stick in the top!

[Jonathan Townsend]

How are folks doing implementing scripts to alter the text/graphics dynamically... for obvious conjuring applications like a wireless confabulation etc?

???

J

[Gordon Meyer]

The Iliad is the one to consider, if it weren't so expensive. The problem with the Kindle and the Sony Reader is that they don't display PDF in a usable way. I had a Sony Reader for a while and found it unusable for this reason. My write-up is here:

http://www.43folders.com/2007/11/11/my- ... ony-reader

[Richard Kaufman]

I was under the impression that the newer versions of the Sony reader did allow you to load and view pdf files.

[John Signa]

They can, but the key phrase was "in a usable way." The problem is that most PDFs are formatted for 8.5x11, not the Reader's smaller screen.

[Larry Barnowsky]

I bought my wife the Kindle last week. She is a voracious reader who can devour a large book in a day. When we travel, our luggage would be filled with her books. Now she can upload books from Amazon wirelessly through the free cellular connection they provide. Instead of a dozen books to carry, she travels with the Kindle with as many titles as she wants. The screen is very kind to the eyes and you can adjust the font with five choices of size. It remembers your last page and you can write notes using the tiny keyboard at the bottom. She ordered one book as a sample. They sent her wirelessly directly to the Kindle the first chapter. She didn't like it so there was no charge for the sample chapter. Your Kindle book purchases are stores on Amazon too so if you lose your Kindle your purchased books are still yours to download to your new Kindle. The screen is not backlit. The brighter the light, the brighter is the screen. It's fine in bright sunlight unlike an LCD screen. The battery can run the unit for days without recharging. She'll still buy regular books but carrying around a library of hundreds of books in a 9 ounce package is very appealing.

Although the Kindle reader isn't designed with pdfs in mind, you can copy a pdf to the clipboard and paste it in a word document. That can be imported into the Kindle by USB cable or you can send it to the Kindle website where they will send it back wirelessly to your Kindle in the proper format.

Larry

[Danny Archer]

My brother has a Kindle and he loves it... these early models are like 78 phonograph records... the technology will improve quickly I believe...

[Naphtalia]

I have a few friends who have them. All love them. I'll wait for the time being, but am eager for the time I get one.

[Eoin O'hare]

I'm waiting for this.