I’ve had my hands on a Kindle for three weeks now, time enough to extrapolate some early speculation about the future of news on e-reader devices:
- Think tactile. Like a lot of people my age (60), I love holding a printed newspaper or book in my hands. I was surprised by how much I enjoy the feel of reading with a Kindle.
- Think hybrid. The Kindle is not cutting into my time with the three other platforms I rely on for news — print, online and iPhone. This 10.2 ounce gizmo is significantly increasing the time I spend reading news.
- Think incremental spending. Neither my spouse nor I was prepared for how much extra money I’m spending for news on a six inch diagonal screen that’s not as crisp as print or as bright as online.
- Think work-in-progress. Amazon’s presentation of news on the device is basic. (Imagine Mercury Center on AOL, circa 1993, without color or graphics.) But Apple, Plastic Logic, Sony and other competitors will enhance the e-reader interface and improve publishers’ leverage on revenue splits.
Why am I finding reading on a Kindle so much more enjoyable than reading from the screen of a laptop or desktop?
Lacking any training whatsoever in the physiology of reading, I can offer only a hunch. Yes, the 16-shaded text is somewhat easier on the eyes than a backlit computer screen. But for me, at least, reading something that’s in my hands — whether analog or digital — simply works better than reading something less personally connected.
So far, the Kindle 2 is exercising just 30 percent of my personal digital capacity:
- Fingernail of left index finger for the ON switch (also functions as an OFF switch, but auto-off makes that unnecessary).
- Right thumb to toggle among five main choices: HOME, NEXT PAGE, MENU, BACK and the so-called 5-WAY joystick. The 5-WAY provides access to the Kindle store, text-to-speech and other options.
- Left thumb to select PREVIOUS PAGE or NEXT PAGE.
Apparently that’s enough activity to keep me focused on the words, despite (maybe partly because of) the limited graphics of the Kindle interface.
Age may be a factor. Since reading on a Kindle is more like reading in print than reading online, the experience may be disproportionately comfortable for those of us who have spent more time with ink on paper than pixels on screens.
Amazon has released no demographics of Kindle buyers, but a self-selecting survey on Amazon.com indicates that Kindle ownership skews old, especially among those age 51 to 60. Josh Benton of Nieman JournalismLab calls that bad news for newspapers on the theory that a Kindle preference could undercut print subscriptions among newspapers’ most loyal customers — old folks.
I see the Kindle (and other e-readers) more as a supplement to print and online as opposed to a substitute for either. This gap-filling could emerge in a couple of ways.
In Detroit, downloads of the e-editions of the Free Press and the News have jumped significantly since the papers cut back home delivery to three days a week. The paper bundles its charge for the e-edition as part of its $12 monthly fee for its three-day print delivery. E-edition usage spikes on days the paper is not delivered to homes. Look for another jump in e-edition usage when the papers begin offering it on the new Plastic Logic platform later this year.
In my own case, I’ve canceled no print subscriptions as I’ve increased my Kindle time. I’ve replaced print with the Kindle in some circumstances (late night reading in bed) and have abandoned most laptop reading in others (there’s no better place to appreciate a Kindle than a cramped coach seat in the air).
This supplemental role will become increasingly important as the chaotic gap widens between the erosion of old media forms and the emergence of new ones.
Relatively modest sales of the $359 devices, coupled with Amazon’s 70 percent share of subscription revenues, has limited how much money news organizations can make with the Kindle.
For whatever reason, though, I find myself more willing to spend money for content on the Kindle than I’ve ever spent online. My purchases include $1.99 a month for the L.A. Times‘ Top of the Ticket blog, $2.49 for a guide to Barcelona for an upcoming trip, $9.99 for a monthly subscription to the Boston Globe, and $9.99 for Jennifer Weiner’s first novel, “Good in Bed,” a title that has provoked more than one conversation among friends perusing my Kindle home page.
It’s not that Amazon and its newspaper partners have perfected the presentation of news on the Kindle. Far from it. The Kindle offers only the crudest clues to the hierarchy and presentation journalists work so hard to refine both in print and online. Its text-to-speech feature is handy, but needs work (The New York Times reported the Kindle’s mispronunciation of the president’s name, still not fixed 10 days later as you’ll notice in this brief excerpt from the audio version of this Globe op-ed on the Kindle.)
As usability expert Jakob Nielsen has pointed out, some of the Kindle’s controls are less than ideal, especially the 5-way joy stick. But the sum of my interaction with the thing is a physical involvement that enhances reading, an experience that is physical as well as intellectual.
In many ways, a newspaper on a Kindle shares more similarities with its print version than its presentation on the Web. In comments attached to an E-Media Tidbits item, Jim Romenesko complained recently that The Wall Street Journal fails to deliver updates through the day to his WSJ Kindle subscription. Perhaps influenced by what users of the Free Press and News have said about those papers’ e-editions, I find myself appreciating the “finished” nature of newspapers on the Kindle.
If the Kindle were my only access to news, I’d be frustrated. As one tool among several, I’m happy with it — especially for publications not available to me in print.
Like the Globe.
After flirting with and dropping a dozen papers during 14-day free Kindle trials, I decided to pay for the Globe (my interest in the city prompted by an upcoming fellowship and a daughter in grad school there).
Those considerations had not provoked me to make frequent visits to Boston.com. But on my Kindle, I find myself scanning Globe headlines, drilling down when something catches my eye.
That happened 10 days ago when the paper reported a crash on the Green Line trolley that bisects part of Boston University’s urban campus and includes my daughter among its regular passengers.
The Globe‘s coverage of that story also illustrates the limitations of its Kindle application. Shortly after reading the crash story on my Kindle, I checked Twitterific on my iPhone and noticed a Tweet from the Nieman Journalism Lab about a Globe graphic depicting the crash. When I returned to my desk, I found the graphic on Boston.com.
One story, three platforms. Welcome to the hybrid future of news.
