I think it’s fair to say I’ve been of the earliest, strongest and most prolific fans of Amazon’s fabulous electronic book reader, the Kindle, since the day they unveiled it, just about 14 months ago. I’ve defended the Kindle against reviews from people who’d never actually had one, iPhone fans who like to read their books in 3-inch chunks and the inevitable whiny mainstream newspaper reviewers. I’ve defended the thing so much that blogger and publisher Rex Hammock even once said — jokingly — that he was “outsourcing” his opinions of ebook readers to me.
But today, I come not to praise Amazon but to critique, to complain and to whine. For a few weeks now, I’ve had a thought creeping up from the back of my mind that Amazon was fumbling its leading position in ebooks. First, Sony came out with a much improved version of its reader in time for the holidays and Amazon offered…nothing. Worse than nothing even, they ran out of Kindles for the second year in a row, losing out on countless sales from people who weren’t willing to wait until February or March to receive a Christmas gift.
Next, I started thinking about all the little, niggling software flaws that I assumed would have been long-ago rectified by firmware upgrades. What could be simpler than adding a few features, fixing a few flubs and generating a lot of positive buzz by automatically upgrading everybody’s Kindle software over the built-in wireless connection?
Sure, there was one incredibly minor firmware upgrade last winter and news recently of a second one, dubbed 1.2.0 (link may require Yahoo ID sign-in). But neither of these upgrades has added much of anything or generated any buzz at all. I don’t think the gadget-news-happy folks at sites like Engadget have even noticed the 1.2.0 upgrade yet, it’s so minor.
Take the organization of reading material. You’ve had your Kindle for a year, you’ve bought lots of books, downloaded others for free, maybe subscribed to magazines or blogs, maybe sent yourself a whole pile of documents. The only display and organizing option is to see everything in one huge long list that requires endless paging to sort through. When Kindle first came out, this was a minor concern — and it’s still hardly a game breaker — but IT’S SO EASILY FIXABLE. What exactly is preventing Amazon from adding some folder-like feature so we can keep things where we want them?
I first wrote about the Kindle for my day job, where I predicted it would be a financial winner for Amazon on par with the boost Apple got from the iPod. I still believe that. But Amazon needs to pay much closer attention to the Apple playbook. The iPod and iTunes store ecosystem have seen constant improvement, added features and new types of material along with some really major new benefits like downloadable rental movies. Apple has even been willing to discontinue the best-selling model at a particular time to replace it with an even better model, beating competitors to the punch. And the attention to detail is impressive. After I complained about the lack of the iTunes plus grey plus sign symbol showing up on the new Genius recommendation lists in iTunes 8.0, it was fixed weeks later in the 8.01 upgrade.
By contrast, Amazon has sat listlessly by, doing absolutely nothing to add features, improve the hardware or extend the ecosystem. How about some business model innovation? Rentable books or all-you-can-eat book plans or something, anything? Nope. Nada. Amazon needs to get back on the ball or the Kindle is in danger of becoming, in one of Steve Jobs’ most derisive monikers, just “a hobby.”
UPDATE: Of course, within minutes of posting this thought, comes news of a February 9 press conference where Amazon may unveil the upgraded Kindle. Brad Stone on the New York Times Bits blog has an excellent wrap-up on news and rumors of the Kindle Mark II.
(As an aside, I’d been thinking about writing this post for a few days when I saw that publishing exec Joe Wikert was bored with running his Kindleville blog and was looking to hand it off to a new author.)
Previous coverage:
Ignore the static: Kindle is great for reading (11/24/07)
Ignore that Cranky Mossberg and his Kindle whine (11/29/07)
The Kindle is for readers, the Kindle is for readers (6/20/08)
Apple will not slay Amazon’s Kindle, not even close (8/20/08)
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