Why I won’t touch the Kindle 2 with a ten foot pole.

http://weblog.masukomi.org/2009/02/12/why-i-wont-touch-the-kindle-2-with-a-ten-foot-pole

by raganwald • 17 years ago

43 65 17 years ago

weblog.masukomi.org

Another factor to consider in the price of a physical book is space. The median home price is roughly $200,000 and the median home size is just above 2000 square feet. This gives a cost of ~ $100 per sq. ft.

I just measured some books I had and 10 books per foot by 4 shelves high yields a minimum cost of $2.50 per book to store. This does not factor in moving costs of the lifetime of the book nor energy costs to heat/cool the books.

It is surprisingly expensive to keep 'stuff'.

wallflower3• 17 years ago

I remember reading a book about de-cluttering once and the author made a really interesting point. She said "if 20% of your apartment or house is clutter, you're paying 20% of your rent or mortgage towards storing it."

bcostlow• 17 years ago

Yeah, but if you de-clutter, unless you can then downsize to something else, what do you gain? Now you're just paying that 20% towards storing air.

I guess you could replace the clutter with something else (another comfy chair?) but I'd rather have the books.

Harkins• 17 years ago

Actually, books should lower the cost of heating/cooling a house. They'll act to keep the temperature level in the house at a static level, though they would cost more if you often cycled your house between warm and cold.

It's like keeping jugs of water in the refrigerator: the system works by cooling the air, which falls out when you open the door. The space taken up by the water means there's less air to fall out.

In any case, your analysis of square footage is clever, I hadn't thought to consider that cost.

JoelSutherland2• 17 years ago

They won't make it cheaper than if you had less house.

If the square footage would otherwise be empty my whole point falls apart.

ajju• 17 years ago

And books are heavy. I'm in the middle of moving and books are second in weight only to heavy furniture. I do have a lot of them though.

adamvan• 17 years ago

Must not have a bunch of LPs lying around; they kill books on density.

Angostura• 17 years ago

This assumes that I don't enjoy the physical objects themselves and being able to wander around and pick a book off a shelf. I do. I'm willing to pay for the pleasure.

biohacker422• 17 years ago

I preemptively apologize for this attempt to hijack the discussion, but does $200,000 seem high for a median?

I'm a reasonably well compensated developer in the Boston area and it still seems high.

masukomi5• 17 years ago

Are you kidding?! $200k in Boston would be a freaking steal. People would almost literally kill for that. I'm in cambridge and all the 2 bedroom condos on the blocks around me are $450k and up. And that's a CONDO with shared walls.

donw• 17 years ago

$200k won't buy you a shack in San Jose., which is probably one of the cheaper areas to live in the Silicon Valley.

But it's getting close. :)

pchristensen• 17 years ago

Pre-crash, median home price is about $240K (not sure if it has fallen and by how much). Median condo price was actually higher (~$250K) because condos were generally only in more expensive metros.

chollida1• 17 years ago

> This does not factor in moving costs.

This shouldn't be over looked. My wife and I have moved twice and both times we had to cull our "library" in an attempt to save space and weight.

Figuring an average moving cost of 60 cents per pound and 1 pound per book, moving costs for books can add up very quickly. And forget about it if your moving across an ocean. With e-books this cost is negligible.

kragen2• 17 years ago

Dividing medians by medians is not safe; you get weird interactions between differences by region and differences within each region. (Houses in Manhattan are smaller than houses in Cheyenne, and also cost more, because the cost per square foot is higher; but in both Cheyenne and Manhattan, bigger houses cost more. Except when you get into the ghetto/non-ghetto distinction, etc.)

Also I don't think the medians you cite are anywhere close to correct. Maybe they're correct as medians only within the US? I remind you that the US is less than 5% of the population.

Otherwise your figures look good to me.

Maybe the right answer here is to pay attention to your current region. I'm paying about US$350 per month (before taxes) for 60m², about 600ft². For me 40 books per square foot means each book costs about ⅝¢ per month to store. I think that's about US$0.68.

Brushfire• 17 years ago

Considering most people mortgage their home over 30 years, it is not unfair to use this fact and build onto your math a bit:

2.50 / 30 years = about 8.33 cents per year in 'storage rent'.

Seems pretty cheap to me, when you compare relative costs of storage.

Of course, I'm typing this with some sarcasm, because the whole metric is bad. Your analysis assumes that: A - somehow you have unlimited items to store in all the empty places in your house, B - ignores the absolute cost of having empty space (you've already spent on the house, but if you leave that space empty, you have opportunity cost becuase you COULD be storing books), and C - ignores any utilitarian value you get from having the books around. :)

Here's a hint: C is most important. And it references back to the point the article is trying to make.

It is clever though, so I'll give you that.

JulianMorrison2• 17 years ago

The only advantage the Kindle has is wireless access to the Amazon store. There are other cheaper readers.

jskopek• 17 years ago

Online integration with the amazon store isn't just another feature point though, it's the company's primary direction with the product.

The content acquisition problem is just as important, or even more so, then the hardware problems for any electronic media device. Someone using a competing e-reader has to navigate a number of competing e-book stores, download and keep track of their copies on their own storage media, and then sync books over to their device via USB or storage device; that's a lot of work when you just want to read a book.

I remember reading about someone who described how he'd walk into airport book stores, lazily browse through their books, and then remotely download his favorites onto his kindle; that's powerful.

JulianMorrison2• 17 years ago

Nah. They just slope over to http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4382165/For_Dummies_Ebooks_c... and stuff themselves like a basking shark feeding on krill.

wallflower3• 17 years ago

> I remember reading about someone who described how he'd walk into airport book stores, lazily browse through their books, and then remotely download his favorites onto his kindle; that's powerful.

Instant gratification works both ways. If I really need a book on something, I will go the local book superstore, browse through them and read the reviews on Amazon.com while there and buy (price insensitive) the one that seems the best. Pre-iPhone, I would read the reviews on Amazon.com and then call around to hold it.

jessewmc• 17 years ago

Honest question: Can you give some examples? I'm not familiar with the market and being a Canadian the Kindle isn't an option anyway, but I'm curious as to what nice options are available with a proper e-ink screen.

gabrielroth• 17 years ago

> I wouldn’t even use one if you offered it to me for free.

So if I offered you a Kindle for free, you wouldn't even use it to read non-DRM-protected books in open formats?

You used to hear the same argument about the iPod -- that because the iTunes Store sold DRM-protected music, the device was somehow intrinsically flawed, even though it's also perfectly happy playing non-DRM-protected music. It's a weird argument. If you don't want to pay for DRM-protected content, don't pay for it. The device itself might still be useful, especially if you're offered one for free.

ScottWhigham• 17 years ago

Actually I never heard that argument against the iPod. I heard the DRM argument against iTunes often enough but I've never heard anyone complain about the iPod being a DRM-laden monster.

unalone9• 17 years ago

A few high school friends of mine got more obscure music players because they didn't want to be forced into using iTunes. One or two thought iTunes added DRM to tracks that wouldn't have DRM otherwise.

masukomi5• 17 years ago

That's because it's not a DRM laden monster and the distribution of music is such that there are many alternative ways to get songs you've purchased onto one without involving DRM. Unfortunately the same can not be said for books even though essentially all of the electronic books will let you put non-drm'd material on them.

masukomi5• 17 years ago

exactly what non-DRM protected books in open format are you suggesting? The ones in the public domain? I honestly wouldn't. I can think of maybe one I've wanted to read in the past 10 years. As for your iPod argument, it's flawed too because none of the books i have legally purchased can be put on a kindle. Well, maybe 2 could, but they're PDF and formatted for a different paper size than the kindle and would thus look like crap on it. So, what non-drm protected content exactly are you suggesting that I would have to put on this hypothetically free Kindle that would make it worth bothering with?

unalone9• 17 years ago

Good PDF books store their stuff as text. That's a part of the PDF format. If I download a book as a PDF, when I move it onto the Kindle using their free conversion that costs me nothing and takes less than a minute, it appears as beautiful formatted text, like magic. Almost like the PDF format is designed to be flexible enough to adjust to other mediums.

First off, never underestimate the public domain. The funniest and greatest books ever written are all public domain. Hell, it's worth it to get the complete Shakespeare in accessible format alone. Meanwhile, most .lit sales come with no DRM whatsoever. Opening my Kindle right now, the following files are on the front page: A Confederacy of Dunces, one of the funniest books ever written; My Man Jeeves, ditto; Infinite Jest, one of the great novels of the 90s; The Woman Who Rides Like A Man, a young adult novel from an author I'm nostalgic for; Ulysses, the greatest novel of all time; 2BRO2B, by Vonnegut; the complete Shakespeare; Neuromancer, The Bible, and It's Not News, It's Fark.

Over half of those books were completely free.

Only one of those books has DRM, and - as I stated elsewhere - that DRM is already crackable. I could email you that book this afternoon and you could read it on your Kindle, if you really felt like reading the Fark book. The other ones are entirely open. I have something that's the size of a paperback book that has more literature on it than the rest of my sizable portable library.

I've defended the Kindle again and again from uninformed commenters here - with all respect to you, you're falling into this category and worse, because you're so over-the-top about it in your blog. I will quickly summarize why the Kindle is more valuable to me than my iPod is. If I want to go to New York City for a day, it's a 4-hour transit round trip. I read extremely quickly. I could carry three books with me, or I could carry my Kindle and have, as was stated, a full library. Furthermore, I can browse the Internet. Check my email. Download books on-the-go. Download samples of books. If I download a sample of The Complete Sherlock Holmes, that includes two books' worth of samples, for free, in 30 seconds, wherever I am, with easily-unlocked DRM.

The free books alone are worth it. I'm going to be elitist here and say that if you don't think getting, completely free, access to the works of Joyce and Yeats and Elliot and Orwell and Melville and Homer and the complete Greek and Egyptian and Norse mythos, is worth the price of 40 paperback books, you are insane. This device has saved me an incredible amount of money and it's given me access to literature I wouldn't have had access to in any other form. I got old books that I'd read decaying at my library onto my Kindle in much more pristine condition. I got a collection of rare Asimov books that are out of print.

You very obviously haven't used a Kindle, and you even more obviously haven't put thought into just what makes the Kindle good - that or, worse, you're ignoring those points just to be a shill to those people who will mindlessly attack anything with DRM. I don't want to offend, because it's really not worth a fight over, but this was a senseless, sensationalized article that attacks something that's brought a lot of joy into my life, and I think that your implications are both personally offensive and entirely irrelevant to this web site, and I'm flagging your article.

saundby• 17 years ago

Try sources like the Baen Free Library (http://www.baen.com/library/). There are plenty of current titles available legally and for free there and elsewhere if Gutenberg doesn't suit your tastes.

fleaflicker• 17 years ago

maybe for him but i know people that exclusively read hardcover bestsellers when they travel. these are a huge pain to carry around. plus you hardly ever to re-read them so it doesn't matter if the kindle breaks or goes out of business.

masukomi5• 17 years ago

I avoid the hardcovers except for those of very few authors because, they're physically awkward and heavier, however, I have reread every hardcover novel I've purchased at least once. In fact I've reread almost every novel I own at least once and within the next 20 years I suspect I will have reread my current shelves at least 3 times on average. For me it's equivalent to rewatching a movie, which people do all the time.

If you never reread books the kindle makes much more sense, but I do, and I lend them out a lot too.

mattmaroon3• 17 years ago

This won't be a problem for most people, since they read stuff written by Dan Brown that really doesn't require a rereading 20 years down the line. But I understand the sentiment.

Nonetheless my understanding is you can fairly easily get any pdf onto the Kindle, meaning if you get a non-DRMed version of the books you're fine. Is that not correct? I own a number of digital music player's that support one DRM scheme or another, and use them frequently, yet have never actually purchased a DRM'ed file.

raganwald• 17 years ago

> This won't be a problem for most people, since they read stuff written by Dan Brown that really doesn't require a rereading 20 years down the line. But I understand the sentiment.

Hmmm... I have never read anything by Dan Brown but I do re-read Ian Fleming, Alistair Maclean and James Clavell.

ewiethoff3• 17 years ago

Dan Brown is the author I love to hate. His Digital Fortress and Deception Point are hilariously bad. But don't bother spending any money on them; just borrow them from the library.

mattmaroon3• 17 years ago

I got DaVinci Code just to see why everyone in the airports was reading it, and wow. I mean, just wow. If you ever find yourself routinely overestimating the intelligence of the average American, read that book, then Google around to find out how many copies it sold.

ewiethoff3• 17 years ago

I haven't read any of Fleming's adult fare. But his fudge recipe in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is fabulous. Read Chitty. Make fudge. Yum. And I dare you to spill boiling chocolate on a Kindle!

unalone9• 17 years ago

Correct. If you've got Mobipocket, you can convert pretty much any PDF, Lit, or Doc file and edit metadata to your liking.

sspencer• 17 years ago

My thoughts exactly.

vaksel• 17 years ago

why can't someone do the same to Kindle that they did to iPhone? Codebreak it, so it can play any non-Amazon stuff.

Or better yet, just have it read HTML/pdf/.lit stuff, so that you can get the eBooks for free and read them on there?

unalone9• 17 years ago

The AZW format has been broken for a long time. That fact is conveniently ignored by the people who like getting mad at things.

kqr2• 17 years ago

Can you please cite the source for this? I have not read that the AZW format has been broken. People, however, have figured out how to read mobipocket protected formats on the kindle. That's a big difference.

A hacked AZW format would allow me to convert it to non-DRM format and even share it with other kindles.

ahoyhere2• 17 years ago

AZW is just a slightly modified version of .mobi, which is an open(ish) format and well understood.

You can get gobs of free Project Gutenberg books formatted for the Kindle as AZW files (and in many other formats) at http://manybooks.net/

edw519• 17 years ago

http://www.amazon.com/Palm-1047NA-TX-Handheld/dp/B000BI7NHY/...

http://www.amazon.com/Acer-Aspire-8-9-inch-Laptop-Processor/...

copenja• 17 years ago

Do you love reading or do you love owning books? If you love reading, the kindle is great. If you to to own books, the kindle is horrible. If you love both, well you have a real tough decision to make.

nazgulnarsil2• 17 years ago

I want a netbook with e-ink. (of course we'll need higher res, color, faster response time e-ink, plus a built in reading light since they aren't backlit) But this to me would be the ultimate portable computing device. add a headset with VoiP service and set up some way of getting calls without constantly draining the computers battery and you have a killer device.

blackguardx• 17 years ago

The color you would get on an E-ink display would be pretty crappy. Because of the limitations of technology, you wouldn't be able to get any better color images than what a newspaper has. E-ink displays are also pretty slow to refresh. They would have do something that doesn't use rasterization.

nazgulnarsil2• 17 years ago

doesn't look too bad. especially considering that this is new display tech. http://www.e-ink.com/press/images/image_release_86b.html

ahoyhere2• 17 years ago

I could write a long list of stupid design decisions they made with the Kindle (it leaves nasty marks in my hand when I hold it in my preferred way), but... the utility of it is amazing.

And I live in Europe so I can't even download stuff over the wireless. I have to buy it on Amazon.com and then copy via USB. (Which is painless, even tho.)

I use it to get American / English books near instantly, at 1/5th the cost of having them shipped from Amazon DE.

I use it to travel -- which I do a lot. I can read upwards of a book a day, since I read about 80-100 pages an hour, even non-fiction.

Do I still buy paper books? Yes, I love them.

Does the Kindle free me to buy books I wouldn't otherwise, because of the weight, size, expense and time involved? Absolutely.

I bought the Kindle 1 in November and I already preordered the Kindle 2. There's no turning back for me.

As for the DRM, I don't really care. Say I can pay $8 for a novel or $12 to see a movie in a theater.

The novel is cheaper, even if I couldn't read it over and over and over again -- which I can. After seeing the movie in the theater, I can't watch it again without paying again.

I look at the Kindle as a kind of movie theater convenience for books, with the built-in ability to read anything I want again, as long as I want. Works for me.

baddox• 17 years ago

Why I won't touch the Kindle 2 with a ten foot pole: Because I don't have a ten foot pole OR a Kindle 2, and even in I did, doing so would be utterly pointless.

mapleoin• 17 years ago

the obligatory 1997 RMS essay: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

asciilifeform• 17 years ago

Many of the abuses in Stallman's tale have been brought to life by textbook publishers.

I have taken a number of classes which used books having an online time-limited, non-transferrable homework supplement.

Anyone who is counting on "the invisible hand of the market" to kill DRM will be in for a rude surprise when they find themselves among one of the captive audiences where it flourishes.

Why I won’t touch the Kindle 2 with a ten foot pole.

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