More Words, Deeper Hole

It's so close to being a good idea that you can see a good idea from there.

Amazon's book pricing and DRM scheme say "we expect you to treat Kindle e-books as being every bit as desireable as real books." Sadly the device's cost, size, and battery life all say "Kindle e-books are not as desireable as real books."

As montoya says, if the Kindle experience admitted that e-books were still the ugly stepsister of the real thing, and priced them accordingly, it might go the other way. $10 Kindle editions of $25-$30 hardbacks are a start, but I want $3 Kindle editions of $7 paperbacks, and a further price break on a Kindle edition of any book I already bought from Amazon in paper format. Free would be good, but I'd still go as high as $2. Then when I was travelling I'd have a Kindle and a couple paper books in case of emergency, instead of a big sack of books and e-books on my PDA for emergencies.

Oh, and I hate the Kindle's keyboard. I see the necessity if Amazon expects us to do all our book shopping from the Kindle, but I'd rather shop from my PC and have more of the bulk of my e-book reader devoted to screen space.