I’ve always loved reading but the thought of holding a book was a barrier to entry for some reason. Then when I would delve into a book I would always lose my place in the book constantly. I’m not sure why the act of reading a physical book was a challenge to me but it was.
When Amazon released the Kindle I was very much uninterested at first. Why would I want a device that does one thing? The iPhone does almost everything I need it to do — and then some. Working at a library for nearly 5 years has made my passion for books much more intense. It is really easy to want to read when you’re surrounded by books all day. I found myself reading a little bit of a book and then returning it because the book as a form factor simply did not work for me.
What Kindle to Buy?
First of all let me back up, the very first thing I had to do was decide that I want a Kindle. We’ve given you a guide in the past about what options you have for e-readers. I decided the Kindle had the best online store integration and the best reviews.
When I started my hunt for a Kindle I had to decide which one I wanted to buy. There are quite a few different “flavors”, so I had to go through and decide what was important to me:
- I’m always near wifi, so I did not need the 3G version.
- I did not really think I was going annotate anything so the keyboard was not an issue for me.
- I did a little research to figure out if the special offers would bother me. Then I found out that if they did, I could buy my way out of them if they did end up bothering me. I decided to give special offers a go.
- The Kindle Fire was a non -tarter for me, I want an e-reader, not a tablet.
So, I finally settled on the Kindle 4 Wifi with Special Offers.
Setup
Unboxing the Kindle gave me the same warm and cozy feeling that unboxing an Apple product does. Much like Apple, it was very clear that Amazon was thinking when they designed the packaging. Instructions for setup were clear and easy to understand. But I still couldn’t help but think that I would need to sync this to a computer.
(I think I have to work on my “post-PC era” way of thinking.)
Once I turned on the Kindle I ran into the “I really wish I would have bought the keyboard version” syndrome because typing my wifi password was a real hassle. Also, typing my Amazon account and password was about the five worst minutes I’ve had with my Kindle. After typing all the information in I decided that the buying of content would happen on my computer and not on the Kindle.
Uses
Of course, buying and reading books was the main thing I bought the Kindle for. The day I bought the Kindle I went through the free public domain books that Amazon has created for the Kindle. I picked up a few Sherlock Holmes stories and started reading them right away. One thing the Kindle does well is allow you to save highlighted portions of text from books and then upload them to kindle.amazon.com. You can choose to make those portions public or private, and you can even share them on your social network of choice.
Amazon has gotten the buying of books down to a “search and buy” process. To buy a book, I simply had to search for the book and “Buy and Send to Kindle”, and it would be there in a matter of seconds. There was no lead time waiting for a book to show up, no more tracking numbers, no more finding a more interesting book while I waited for the first one to arrive.
Sample chapters are also a great way to figure out if you want to buy the book or not. When I delved into purchasing content on the Kindle, I decided to read the sample chapter(s) before actually buying the book. I have been burned by a really good sample chapter and a not-so-good book a few times, but for the most part I’ve done well finding books that are good for me.
Long-form internet articles have always been something that I would lose my concentration on when trying to read. Kindle It from Five Filters is a great tool to capture long-form articles to send to my Kindle for later reading.
In Conclusion
The Kindle 4 has reignited my love of reading. In just 30 days I’ve been able to read more than 4 books. That is something that would have never happened before I got my Kindle.
Photo credit: Roberto Ventre (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
I also absolutely love my Kindle 4. I also love reading actual books but I dip in and out of so many at a time that taking them all on trips wasn’t an option – so I mainly bought it for travel.
I agree that, whilst the keyboard aspect of it is a very minor hassle, it’s only because we’re so used to everything happening immediately that taking an extra minute to use the keyboard seems like such a petty first world problem that it’s embarrassing to mention!
The things I especially like are:
* I can get a new book delivered in seconds
* I can sample a book first
* there are loads of free classics available
* Buying through the Kindle is really easy & very quick. You start to type the name of the book & it suggests pretty
accurately which book you mean.
* I can dip in & out of different books without having to take them all with me
* I can read it one-handed lying down in bed & don’t have to have to try to keep the pages open
* The books are cheaper than buying paper ones & even cheaper than a lot of charity shop ones (plus you have to find
that book in the shop in the first place!)
* I can read a book that would be physically big in paper form. I read a big book whilst in the long queue at
customs & just popped it in & out of my (quite small) handbag – the paper version wouldn’t have fitted. The Kindle
also easily fitted into the airplane seat pocket without taking up as much room as the paper version would have
* No glare when I read it outside
I still buy ‘real’ books like craft books and anything with coloured illustrations, but overall I’m also completely in love with my Kindle! I take it everywhere.
Joanne, those are all really good points about the Kindle. Thanks for sharing!
The ads are only on the bottom of the screen in the menus and when it is
in sleep mode. You don’t see them at all while reading.
I’ve had the same Kindle mentioned in the article above for a couple of weeks now. I agree that typing on the device is tedious, but not something that is required often.
I would disagree about the price of books. Yes, many are free. Some books are not expensive. Books from popular authors are, from my observation, about the same price as their physical counterparts. Often, I can purchase a physical book from Walmart or some other discount retailer for less than the Kindle version. That said, I still like the device and have purchased some books.
I also keep a couple of Bibles on it, using it for daily reading and to church – search for words, etc. is pretty quick. I do miss the sound of Bible pages rustling as the congregation/group collectively turns to a specific passage.
I still like physical books for some things. Books with illustrations, schematics. Perhaps on a tablet/color device…