Have you seen Amazon’s Kindle, the wireless reading device? It has overcome some of the drawbacks of earlier devices (better resolution, better battery life, cheaper downloads) but I’m still skeptical that a huge number of people will want to spend $399 on one of these. An interesting side note is that master marketer Seth Godin wanted to distribute his book and blog on the Kindle—for free. Amazon said no, we want to sell stuff. I can see their point—they want to train people to pay for the books rather than perpetuating the feeling that the internet is only about free (as in no-cost) information. On the other hand, it would make sense to give people some motivation for shelling out the four hundred dollars. A good compromise could have been to make it a time-limited download, maybe free for a week and then a fee if you want to keep the file forever.
So far I’m not tempted (anyway, as I understand it, at the moment it works only a wireless network in the US, not the UK where I spend most of my time). But if you succumb, let me know what you think of it, either in a comment here or at [email protected].
