I love books — the look and feel, even the smell. They’re almost perfect: relatively portable, random-access, and — treated properly — they’ll last a hell of a long time. If you get tired of them, you can give them away, sell them on eBay, take them to a used-book store, or burn them for kindling, al la Fahrenheit 451… They look grand on bookshelves. They’re almost perfect. The do have a few draw backs:

• Books (and paper) are heavy — especially those damn 4-inch thick computer books.
• Books are not very portable — small quantities are fine, but if you try to take ten or so on vacation with you, it’s a literal drag. Despite their catchy name, Few “Pocket Books” will actually fit in a pocket — or if they do, you look kind of stupid.
• Paper takes up a lot of space — especially those damn user guides, administrator guides, and installation manuals I print and bind in 3-ring notebooks.
• Printed materials tend to “expire” — Today’s newspaper is worth about a dollar, yesterday’s is suitable for wrapping fish. (Of course, tomorrow’s newspaper, if you had it today, would be worth a fortune.)
• Repurposing is difficult — Transmutation costs are outrageous, either lead to gold, or paper to digital. Screw OCR, it’s not good enough, ever.
• Paper is expensive — There a “tree-cost” and an environmental cost. The manufacture and bleaching of paper is horrendous. Stand downwind of a pulp mill and breath deep. You’ll know what I mean.
• The print publishing process is arcane — the economies discourage risk and tend to favor existing authors and large publishers, to the determent of the small publisher or aspiring writers.

In late 2007, Jeff Bezos introduced the Kindle. I’m not sure he’ll be remembered in the same breath as Herr Hoffmann Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (whew). At least his name is shorter. The Kindle is, nevertheless, revolutionary.

Life’s Little Ironies

I got mine in late January of 2008. I feel I’m standing at the edge of history. Despite the book’s drawbacks, it was with some concern for my eternal soul — and some trepidation about the future — that I ordered a Kindle. A classic conundrum, I was caught in a lovers triangle, torn between my love of books and my love of shiny new gadgets. I couldn’t resist. I did not get it simply because I had an extra 400 simoleons burning a hole in my pocket though. I had a real purpose in mind, really. But I do like gadgets.

Gavin’s Second Element of Effective Knowledge Management In Action (I finish two sets of bookcases the week the Kindle arrives)

Just so we’re straight: let me assure you, I am not anxious to herald the end of the 600-year reign of the book. More so, after watching what the iPod and digital music has done to the music industry; I fear for the future. Newspapers are already suffering — perhaps on their last legs — put out to pasture by something as innocent as Craig’s List. Information may want to be free, but writers (and journalists) also want to eat. I think they should. Nevertheless, I bought a Kindle – hoping to fill it with user manuals, installation guides, and 4-inch-thick computer books (and a little pulp SciFi for long airplane rides).

Ironically, my Kindle arrived just after I had spent untold hours building, drilling, cutting, measuring, cutting again, cursing, painting, staining, sanding, and trimming some 30-odd-feet of book shelves for some of my thousand-odd books. There was barely time to admire my work before it was time to ponder the future of books. Had it all been a waste of time? They’re awful purty, if I do say so myself.

The Difference Engine

The Kindle is different; it changes the rules of the game. First, it’s wired, in a wireless sort of way. It comes bundled with a lifetime, free wireless connection to the ‘net — an EVDO connection, no less, via Sprint.

That’s right, you heard me —free. Once you shell out the 400 clamasaurs, you can browse the web, surf to your heart’s content for not another plug nickel. You see, the connectivity is bundled as a cost of sales, book sales. Amazon is betting on making up that cost with the sale of content; figuratively giving away the razors and hoping to sell you a razorblade in the form of a $9.77 Kindle-ized copy of Sweeny Todd (the book, not the movie).

They’ve made the process so painless it’s scary. Gratification is instantaneous. Click a button on the beast, and the book arrives, wirelessly, painlessly, ruthlessly efficient. I worry it’s too painless. Now, when I finish the first book in a three-part trilogy, the next book in the series is just a click away. This could cause a clamasaur problem.

I admit, at first glance, the Kindle looks funny. I was disheartened by its design, seeing the initial press coverage. In the pictures it looked like it was designed for the DHARMA Initiative (right here in Ann Arbor), circa 1968. Up close, though it’s not that bad — kind of retro, kind of not.

It’s here that I think the wonky gadget geeks missed their marks, and missed them badly.

The pundits, previously spoiled by the elegant beauty of all-things iPod, almost universally panned the Kindle, complaining about pretty much everything. But they especially complained that it was impossible to hold and “funny looking” (a technical term meaning not an iPhone). Once I had mine in my hands, I knew where those grumpy geeks had gone wrong. They had been using the Kindle naked. I mean the Kindle was naked, not the gadget geeks. (Don’t go there.)

In the half-dozen reviews I saw or read, every Kindle was demoed without its leather case. It was a logical mistake on their part. They’re used to looking at iPhones, and iPods, and other iThings — we can blame bad iPoddy training. The iPod “case,” for example, is a worthless throwaway specifically designed to make you spend another couple of hundred dollars on iPod accessories.

Back to the point, the Kindle, sans the (included) cover, is awkward to hold. However, properly attired, dressed up in nice leather, it all flows, it all makes sense. This cover is integral. You need it.

A Properly Dressed Kindle

Easy to Hold | Easy to Read

Without its cover, there is no easy place to put your fingers, no logical place to grab it at all. In fact, everything you touch seems to toggle the pages, either forward or back.

Slip it in its cover, however, and suddenly all the weird angles make sense. The left edge sort of slips into two leather brackets, and the weird angles on the right side now provide purchase for your thumb on the cover— they’re cutbacks that let you easily hold the thing without mashing the (now handy) “Next Page” bar. There’s a little plastic tab that snaps into the rubberized underside of the beast that holds it all in place. (Pundits, apparently, don’t read manuals.)

With the cover on, I find myself holding it just like I would hold a hardback book; palms on the cover and thumbs on each edge. Nothing could be more natural. It “feels” like a book. Moreover, it reads like a book. I’ve even taken to taking it to bed, reading a few pages of a novel before The A Daily Show. Let me say that again: it reads like a book. The transition was painless. My luggage has just shed 10 lbs.

It has a couple of other features, some worth mentioning, some not. There’s a speaker, but it’s lousy. Given that, it will play music and audio books. Through headphones or ear-buds the sound’s great. I gave it the Amy Winehouse test, and it passed. But, I’m not giving up my iPod (which is filled with Audiobooks anyway). Besides, there’s no way I could easily wire it into my car without feeling real foolish. Of note, you can put it “to sleep” — locking the keyboard — and the music or audio books will continue to play. This is important; otherwise the cover clicks the mousy-roller thing, playing havoc.

The Weight of Water

The Unabridged Mark Twain 3 Lbs – 4 Oz	The Buying of Congress 1 Lb – 12 Oz	The Hero with a Thousand Faces 1 Lb – 4 Oz	Gavin’sKindle (w / 2GB & cover) 1 Lb

Weight-wise, the Kindle is elegant. It weighs in at exactly one pound, cover included. At first, I thought: “a pound, damn, that’s kind of heavy for a book, ain’t it?” Turns out, it’s not. (And, quite frankly, the Kindle is smaller than it looks in any picture.)

Just for the fun, I decided to run its “comps” — to compare it to a few other books I had laying around on the nightstand.

As you can see in the pictures above, a typical paper-back “trade” book, as represented by The Hero with a Thousand Faces, weighs over a pound and is also slightly larger. A hardback (an embargoed copy of Chuck Lewis’s The Buying of Congress) is almost twice that. A paper-back, unabridged Mark Twain Reader is over 3 lbs. But, then again, Mark Twain is worth his weight in gold. Paperback pulp fiction, the kind I find in airports and carry from country to country, town to town, weighs in at about a pound.

Size-wise digital books on the Kindle average between 500K and 800K. Calculating liberally, that means that my beast, outfitted as it is with a 2GB SD card I found in a drawer, can hold over 2,000 books. With that kind of space, I am going to be well read, but broke.

Here’s the deal: Kindle books typically cost less. By my reckoning, I’ll save the purchase price within two years, on computer books alone. I am, on the other hand, worried about my local Borders, the Kindle’s gain, is their loss. I take solace in the fact that clicking the Kindle is no substitute for my weekly trip to the Border’s redoubt.

Books on the Kindle are cheaper than paper… Here’s a random comparison of titles and prices.

Depending on the book, savings run from nothing, up to about 26 percent of the print edition. Savings over hardback costs are greater still, but that comparison seems unjust, since the difference seems irrelevant.

[Borders, by the way, no doubt fearing the loss of my business, has opened a new concept store in town. It incorporates "digital media and internet features" — a concept they are calling the "media room." I haven't been yet — been too busy building bookcases and playing with my Kindle.]

The Future of Ideas

Finally, with the Kindle, I had two ideas I wanted to pursue — two ideas I used to justify the purchase to myself:

1. I use it as a “geek reference library” — loading it up with PDF copies of manuals, installation guides, administrator references, and all the other desiderata of CIO life (as well as books).
2. There were possible “enterprise” uses — could I, for example, use it for board materials? Would it effectively bridge the gap between things “printed” and things “digital,” serving that in-between no-man’s-land land where we still want paper, but despise it.

The Portable Geek

The first idea turned out to be easy. There are three easy ways to turn other documents, like PDFs, into things that can be read on the Kindle. It’s not perfect, but it works. It works best with text-heavy documents. Graphics can be a problem. They don’t scale well.

At issue here is the ability to scale — fonts and graphics — from “I can read it” to “I can read it across the room.” The text has to be able to “flow” — to adjust to the screen as you up the font size.

Amazon’s native format — a DRM’ed version of the MobiPocket eBook format — does this. Word documents and text documents do this. This makes Kindle conversion easier. PDF’s don’t flow all that well, especially if they’re graphic-heavy. To set the record straight: the Kindle supports Amazon’s DRM format (.AZW), as well as unprotected MobiPocket formats (.PRC and .MOBI) and Text documents. Other formats (like Word and HTML) must be converted

With all of them, Word, PDF, HTML, or Text, the conversion is easy. There are three ways. Two are free, and one costs $0.10 per document. The ten cents is for the wireless delivery.

1. Convert via Email (without wireless delivery) — simply email the file to a special Amazon email address, they’ll convert it for you, and they’ll email it back to you. You then drag it on to your Kindle from your PC.
2. Convert via Email (with wireless delivery) — simply email the file to Amazon to a (slightly) different email address, they’ll convert for you it and email it directly to your Kindle for a cost of ten cents. It arrives on the Kindle via the wireless connection.
3. Convert manually — simply download a (free) copy of the MobiPocket Reader software, and click the button to convert the file to the MobiPocket format. It takes a few seconds and stores it on your hard-drive. Once done, you just drag it into the Documents folder on the Kindle.

That’s it. With a little “conversion” work, I had a complete technical reference library on my Kindle. Moreover, it was searchable. Everything on the Kindle is searchable. That’s what the keyboard is for. Just a few (tiny) keystrokes and you get a KWIC listing of any term you enter. Idea number “One” was a success. I had my geek library, portable, searchable; I’d never suffer insomnia again.

Enterprise and Culture

The other idea, enterprise applications, is slightly problematic. The Kindle, like many of today’s gadgets, does not lend itself well to enterprise. DRM gets in the way, much as it gets in the way of using a Kindle within a library. That’s a problem that needs solving. In my mind, the solution is easy, the answer, simple: like a physical book; a digital book should only be in one place at a time. How this is done, is easy too, but I’ll save that idea for some other time.

DRM aside, there are a few uses where the Kindle has an enterprising chance — a chance to function as a wedge between the analog and the digital world.

Organizationally, for example, we produce and ship an amazing amount of paper, all for an internal audience. Non-profits in general do the same thing. I’m talking about all those board documents; updated policy manuals, bylaws, program plans, pandemic plans, and disaster recovery plans. In organizations today, documents fly through the email-aether. But, in the end, a surprising number end up on paper, in binders, and three-ring notebooks.

The reason is simple. Humans — especially those of longer tooth — don’t especially like to read lengthy documents on LCD. Even short-toothed people don’t like reading long documents on an LCD screen. Enter the Kindle.

My thought is to replace all those “reference-type materials” — Board materials for example — with a Kindle and digital copy. Even at $400 a pop we’d save on in-house publishing costs (not to mention the FedEx bills). Moreover, for the most part, these sorts of documents are not “interactive” they’re reference.

Nevertheless, they’re necessary. And, they’re heavy, awkward, and difficult to transport. They suffer the same liabilities as the “book.” Kindle-izing them would save time, save paper, keep everything centralized and up-to-date, and allow a 10-cent, near instantaneous delivery.

In the end, I am reminded again of Gutenberg. It turns out he only printed about 180 Bibles. He made his money running a press on the side, printing thousands of indulgencies for the Church. It’s an old story, innovation flows to demand. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Perhaps I’m indulging myself, but I suspect Gutenberg would approve.