Thoughts on the Kindle and publishing

I have a professional background in publishing, and got a Kindle for my 30th birthday this summer. Having used it for a few months now, I thought I’d share a few thoughts about how I’ve found it, and what it might mean for reading in the future.

I’m not totally new to ebooks; I got a Sony Reader a few years back. This was impressive in some ways, but still quite primitive. The fatal flaw being that the Digital Rights Management system used by Sony made it difficult (and ultimately impossible) to buy books. You had to register your Reader to a PC, then a Mac. When I updated my computer’s OS, I could no longer read books I’d paid for (luckily, just a couple), nor buy any new books. What an own goal! I ended up scouring the web for out-of-copyright classics.

The Kindle model gets round this kind of difficulty, as you download titles direct to the device you read it on. Amazon have been sensible enough to make this very quick and easy – as I suggested in a blog post a while back. The built-in wireless and easy payment meant I was soon buying books regularly, even on a cycle trip across Europe. In fact I would guess now that I might have spent twice the amount on books as the cost of the reader, in just four months. Another bonus with the Kindle is that you can use the Kindle app on phones or other devices, and read books from your library on these simultaneously. This meant that my wife and I could share books on our cycle trip, without carrying heavy paper books. This also allays one of the biggest fears with ebooks – what if my library gets stolen, or I drop it in the bath?

The Kindle is an impressive piece of kit: well thought-out ergonomically, and designed to unobtrusively encourage reading. It doesn’t need charging often, and feels pretty close to paper, much higher contrast than earlier offerings. Many people talk about a Kindle encouraging ‘frictionless’ reading. I suppose it does, but there are drawbacks to this. You don’t have the spatial/artifactual sense you get with paper books. This kicks in when browsing and purchasing (I really miss looking at colour covers!) and when thinking about how far through a book you are. On a Kindle, all books get very similar (though some vestiges of typography remain). As a counter to this, highlighting and notetaking in a Kindle are very easy, and notes are easily accessible, though not quite robust enough for academic work, I fear.

So I think the main trade-off, for the reader, is a lot more convenience and reading ease, weighed against an assault on aesthetics. Not too different to what happened when printed books elbowed aside illuminated manuscripts, I should think. Or in a more recent parallel, the changes that came about when Allen Lane began publishing cheap paperbacks and making them available outside bookshops. Both of these shifts made the publishing industry bigger, not smaller, as they reached out to new readers, or encouraged reading in places where it didn’t previously happen.

What might it all mean for the publishing industry? This has been much commented on. I think that there are a lot of parallels with the music industry. On the one hand, as a new technology becomes widely adopted, we’ll see a few behemoths (Sony and iTunes in the music industry, Amazon and Adobe in publishing) crowd out many other distributors. On the other hand, digital production and distribution will allow new authors to bypass publishers, in the same way that musicians have used MySpace and GarageBand to reach fans without needing record deals.

But an easily-distributed book is not necessarily a good book. Aside from the logistics of getting a manuscript into a pleasingly-presented book in all good bookshops, publishers also perform a vital role in sifting the dross. Since Amazon is driven by volume, and effectively have limitless shelf space, they have little incentive in weeding out questionable projects. Also, since Amazon has such a dominant position in the ebook market at the moment, they are able to squeeze publisher’s margins. This leaves publishers with less cash to spend on good commissioning and editing. Amazon are investing tiny amounts in new authors, though. In fact I read a book this Autumn: Russell Wiley is out to Lunch and realised as I finished it that it had been supported by a new imprint called Amazon Encore. One suspects that in sidestepping agents, editors etc, and being deluged by eager new authors, Amazon hopes to increase its margin. I am not sure whether online community and crowdsourcing is yet ready to replace the established networks of publishing, however.

I think if the publishing industry is agile enough to exploit the prospects offered by ebooks and the web, it will do well. The kind of openings I have in mind here are lower production and marketing costs (though at present these are replaced by a hefty percentage to Amazon), and a more interactive environment where viral successes can be picked up quickly. Amazon is already exploring interactivity with features such as Tweet your highlight, View popular highlights etc. Though publishers don’t have a history of being agile, they have weathered Gutenberg and Allen Lane, so will, I suspect weather the next big changes, too.