I’m getting a Kindle…
For Christmas, I got a Kindle. Well, if you’ve been keeping an eye on the Kindle newsbits, I had a Kindle ordered for me for Christmas with a delivery date in March. Waiting has been difficult and still is.
Then, my hubby got the word from Amazon that the Kindle I’d be receiving would be the Kindle 2 rather than the original Kindle he ordered. I thought about it and looked again at the Kindle 2 features and now I’m all kinds of excited by this news. At first, I wanted to stay with the original because I liked the keyboard better and the sliding bar rather than the new keyboard and joy-stick key. But when I look at all the other upgrades and features, I find that they far outweigh the joy-stick and keyboard. So, I’m psyched again to get it.
I essentially read for a living. Well, I review books and that involves a lot of reading. With the downward spiral of the economy, many publishers are having to cut somewhere to save money and keep the books coming. That means fewer advanced reading copies (ARCs) and several publishers have already contacted me about PDFs. If they send PDFs as ARCs there’s no printing costs. However, many people don’t like reading on screen. I’d asked for the Kindle for Christmas because I could see the changes coming and I didn’t want to be chained to my laptop or desktop to read — not that my desk chair isn’t comfy but I like to curl up in my chair-and-a-half and read with a cuppa tea or sit on the deck or in the garden. Now I can — or I can when I get my Kindle.
The new Kindle 2 has a read aloud feature. I reported here about Text Aloud, a program that reads PDFs and text files to you in a sort of Stephen Hawking’s voice. Well, the new Kindle 2 has a similar feature. It seems that some people (the Author’s Guild) object. I found two articles on this today: BLORGE’s Kindle 2 prompts “reading Aloud” copyright claim and The Wall Street Journal’s New Kindle Audio Feature Causes a Stir. I can’t believe that anyone would take this claim seriously. It’s not like the book is being copied, and hearing it read by a computer synthesized voice is nowhere near the same as listening to an audio version of the book. It’s not like if I have a choice I’d pick the computer synth-voice over the acting and emoting human voice.
What’s next suing parents for reading to their children before bed. What about reading a bit of an article or a few paragraphs to your partner or friend or coworker in the next cubicle — violation of copyright. I’m also a struggling writer and I have a lot of interest in seeing that intellectual property and copyright are upheld but this argument is totally ridiculous and seems more for getting publicity and making themselves look foolish rather than being a real concern for their members. Obviously they haven’t learned from RIAA’s and MPAA’s mistakes — the more you cry wolf and demonize your users/readers/buyers the less respect you get (though in the case of those two their bottom lines prove them wrong in their basic assumptions — but that is another whole copyright rant…) Deep breath, relax…
I’m anxiously waiting for the message that says my Kindle has been shipped. Once I get it and use it a bit, I’ll probably have a bit more to say about it. Meanwhile, I’m counting the days…