Kindle With Care

The notion of reading a book on an electronic device has always been problematic: the book is pretty much a perfect medium, and it’s difficult to improve on perfection.  There’s portability, resolution, texture, random access, and the satisfying crack as a new hardcover book is opened for the first time.  And the eye strain evoked by backlit computer displays and frustratingly tiny smartphone screens can’t even remotely compare to the contrast of ink on paper.  Enter Amazon’s Kindle 2, which just became available in Canada last week, and aims to offer a viable alternative to the classic dead-tree format.  After spending some time with it over the last few days, we found that e-books still have a ways to go, but—and we can’t believe we’re saying this—we’re totally sold on the concept. Too bad about the dearth of CanLit, though.

About the size of a paperback, we found that the Kindle actually looks slightly smaller than we expected. It’s thin, about the height of two magazines—probably too thin, because it often feels on the verge of slipping. If you’re ordering one up, add a case for it, which can be folded behind the device while reading, and which will add a bit of heft and a more satisfying grip.  We ordered our Kindle at noon, and it arrived at noon the next day. Final cost: CAD $331. [Addendum: two months after the Kindle arrived, a refund for export fees was issued, bringing the shipped cost down to $312.]

Like other current-generation e-readers, the Kindle uses low-power “electronic paper” technology, which is rather remarkable. It’s reflective, like paper, so it doesn’t require a backlight, and it can be read in relatively low light as well as in direct sunlight.  E-paper doesn’t yet have the same contrast as actual paper, so text is displayed on an Etch-A-Sketch grey, requiring slightly more light for reading comfortably in dim rooms.  Overall, however, we didn’t find this to be a problem—text was sharp and highly readable.

Which brings up the most important question: what’s it like to actually read a book on the thing?  Amazon hopes that the Kindle “disappears” in your hands when a book is being read, and for the most part, we found that to be true.  The novelty and unfamiliarity of reading on the device wears off after about ten minutes, and we eventually found ourselves just as absorbed in the text as if we were reading on paper.  This can’t be overstated enough, since it’s the primary challenge of reading a book digitally.

Battery life is stellar, since e-paper only requires a charge when redrawing the screen.  With the wireless antenna turned off, the Kindle can last a couple of weeks without needing a charge, but its charge cycle is impressive even with wireless on.

Buttons on each side of the device, used to turn the page, take some muscle memory adjustment, but became comfortable after a day or so.  “Turning the page” exposes one of the crucial limitations of e-paper: in order to swap the screen, the device has to entirely clear it first and then render the subsequent page, causing a flash between every page turn. This drove us crazy at first, but actually became a non-issue once we began reading.  The flash happens in the period where the eyes move from the bottom of the page to the top of the next page, and the brain gets used to dismissing it, probably in the same way it ignores the gap when turning a physical page.

Reading with an LED booklight was surprisingly effective.  At most angles, there wasn’t any glare, and the e-paper was exceptionally readable.  This bodes well for night-time airplane lighting, or reading in bed.  Like the protective cases, Amazon sells a variety of these alongside the Kindle.

A handy feature is the in-line dictionary, which is hidden as you read, but can display a definition by moving a cursor to the word in question.  The five-way navigation button is too small and stiff, but it can also be used to clip and annotate text in much the same way.  Readers may find annotating books on the Kindle to be more work than it’s worth, although it does neatly collate the passages together in an index.  Bookmarks are easily added, although you’d never know it from the instructions—after outlining an eight-step motion involving menus and the navigation button, Amazon adds as an afterthought that the whole process can be also accomplished in one step, with an ALT-B keystroke.

The tiny keyboard is pretty abysmal, characteristic of typing on a smartphone, but we didn’t use it often.  The same goes for the speakers on the rear, which are useless for playing music with the Kindle’s rudimentary MP3 player, but are passable for the Text-to-Speech feature. Headphones can be plugged into the top of the device.

Unless you are visually impaired and used to the wonky cadence of digital screen readers, Text-to-Speech isn’t a feature on the Kindle that you’re likely to use.  Labelled “experimental,” users can choose a robotic male or female voice to read text back to them, but it obviously lacks the subtle nuances (and correct pronunciation) of a human. Don’t bother.

Text is also available in six sizes, which could be a boon for the older set, or the visually impaired. It renders clearly in all sizes, in a range roughly equivalent to 7pt–20pt.  Because the ability to change text sizes, page numbering doesn’t work for a digital reader.  Instead, the Kindle uses variable “locations,” which takes getting used to.  Confusingly, a single page can have multiple “locations”—fewer for pages with larger text—and changing the font size changes the second location number, but not the first.  It technically makes sense, but we had a hard time figuring it out, so our advice is to use bookmarks instead.

A progress bar along the bottom of the screen also indicates how far you are through a book, and for many books, it also includes chapter markers.  This adds an interesting element, since it tends to invoke satisfying, exact benchmarks—reaching 50%, for example.  We wonder what the average threshold might be before someone feels invested enough in a book not to abandon it.  Having a percentage at your fingertips makes the progress a bit more clinical.

Buying books turns out to be the Kindle’s killer app.  Amazon has inked deals with wireless providers to allow for use of their networks at no additional charge, so shopping for and buying a book can be done “over the air” without syncing to a computer, and without any additional wireless plan.  We bought three books, and each of them downloaded in under a minute.  The Kindle arrives already configured to the user’s Amazon account, so there is no futzing with logins and passwords, but this also means that you don’t want to leave the thing lying around, since anyone can buy a book with it.

Browsing the store is relatively fast, although it’s probably easier to look for books and read reviews on your computer instead of on the Kindle.  Currently, 305,694 books are available in the Kindle Store, but very little of that is Canadian product.  Out of thirty-one books on our wish list, only twelve were available on the Kindle.  None of the 2009 Giller Prize nominees are downloadable, for example, nor are any works from the Giller jury: Russell Banks, Victoria Glendinning, and Alistair MacLeod.  Canadian publishers say that the licensing deals are in progress, but give no indication when we can expect to see CanLit in the Kindle Store.  Many domestic e-books are already available on Indigo’s Shortcovers service, although those can’t be read on the Kindle, thanks to digital rights management.

DRM is likely a deal-breaker for some, preventing books from being lent to others, and locking purchased e-books to a user account.  Amazon attempts to dull the edges of DRM, however, buy allowing users to re-download purchased books indefinitely, and link up to six Kindles to an account.  Following a recent debacle wherein Amazon pulled copies of 1984 and Animal Farm from its customers’s Kindles due to a licensing mixup—including the customer’s notes and annotations—the company has since stated that it will no longer erase books from the device under these circumstances.

The Kindle does have support for other text formats like TXT, MOBI, and PRC, and in a more rudimentary level, PDF.  Consumers can download thousands of books in the public domain from outlets like Project Gutenberg, although since many of these are either scanned with optical character recognition technology and assembled by volunteers, finding a properly typeset book can be hit-and-miss.  Adding a book to the Kindle manually is as easy as plugging the device into your computer via USB and dragging the e-book to the Documents folder.

Some textbooks and reference books are available for the Kindle, but the need to annotate, search, and randomly access these types of works makes them unsuited to the device, not to mention its greyscale screen and sometimes wonky rendering of graphics and PDFs.  The Kindle is for leisure, not academic reference.

Public domain works can also be downloaded directly via the Kindle Store for $2.  Most current books are $11.99, although we found a fair amount for $6, and the Jennifer Erin Valent bestseller Fireflies in December was only $2.

Sixty-four international newspapers are also available by subscription, but Canada’s offerings so far only include the Globe and Mail, the National Post, the Montreal Gazette, and the Vancouver Sun.  Readers can subscribe to a series of magazines as well, like Time, Newsweek, and Slate.  Every newspaper and periodical offers a two-week free trial, and each edition is downloaded automatically in the background as it becomes available, as long as wireless is kept on.

Reading a newspaper on the Kindle is less effective than reading a book, primarily because the articles are indexed like web pages and require navigation when choosing what to read.  Still, for transit commuters and frequent airline passengers, a subscription to their newspaper of choice might be worth it.  Single issues can also be purchased for about the same price as on the newsstand.

The Kindle includes a very basic web browser, which is currently disabled for Canadian customers, except for accessing Wikipedia.  It’s clunky and confusing and difficult to enter URLs, so it’s best to ignore it.  Like Text-to-Speech and the MP3 player, Amazon classifies the browser as “experimental,” which is code for “it kinda sucks, so we’ll bury it somewhere in the device.”

Despite the caveats, the Kindle is pretty sensational.  For its intended purpose, which is reading e-books, it’s excellent, and that pretty much outweighs the things that are wrong with it.  Its form factor is large enough to be comfortable, but small enough to easily throw in a bag or a purse.  For frequent travellers or transit riders, it could prove to be essential.  After reading three e-books in a row, we were shocked to find how strange it felt to return to an average-sized hardcover, and (again, we can’t believe we’re saying this) we actually longed for the Kindle once we got used to it.

It’s also the perfect e-reader for the technophobic.  Purchasing books is a seamless experience, and the learning curve for the basic functions is extremely uncomplicated.  For a digital device, that’s a major accomplishment.

So: colour us impressed.  We had medium-level expectations for the Kindle as anything other than a novelty device, and it exceeded them almost out of the box.  It certainly has its quirks, but many of the concerns we had evaporated after spending time with it.  As the kinks are ironed out over time, the technology improves, and publishing houses further embrace e-book content (we’re talking to you, Canadian publishers), it’s easy to see these devices becoming as ubiquitous as smartphones and iPods.  Content providers should be cheering the technology rather than resisting it, because the technology has finally reached a tipping point—and anything that keeps people interested in literature is good news indeed.

UPDATE (November 25): Amazon has announced an automatic firmware update to the Kindle 2 that boasts an 85% improvement in battery life, native PDF support, and screen rotation.

All photos by Marc Lostracco/Torontoist.