Amazon recently released their Kindle eBook reader, and it’s nearly perfect.

Imagine that you have a 6″ small, unusually light, paperback in your hand or backpack everywhere you go. Instead of that paperback just being a single copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, it’s truly magical. Flip the page, and you can see Catch-22, flip another, and you read Slashdot live. Forgot to pick up the Wall Street Journal on your way to work this morning? Don’t worry, it’s already in your hand.

As you start reading Catch-22, you come across a word you don’t recognize, like infundibuliform, so you instantly read the definition right in your little book. It’s battery lasts nearly a week. You can annotate the books. It works perfectly in sunlight, it is easy to hold in either hand, and you can adjust the font size to the exact size that you want. It is nearly perfect.

Moreover, it is identical to that amazing encyclopedia, the Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The Kindle should have the words “Don’t Panic” inscribed in it. It’s a small, electronic book on which you can look up Wikipedia on the fly through its wireless connection. The Hitchiker’s Guide, too, is an electronic book, and

…though it cannot hope to be useful or informative on all matters, it does make the reassuring claim that where it is inaccurate, it is at least definitively inaccurate. In cases of major discrepancy it was always reality that’s got it wrong.”[3]

The Guide can receive updates to its data base via Sub-Etha. Field researchers (like Ford Prefect) can also use the Guide to edit entries and transmit these back to the publisher.

Finally, if you have a question, although you cannot use Google, you can ask Amazon’s Now Now service to get it answered quickly.. The only thing I can’t do that I would want in a small, personal computer is SSH.

Why isn’t it a perfect ebook reader? Well, mainly, the restrictions and the price. The device itself costs $400. Moreover, the books designed for the reader which you buy on Amazon.com cost $10 each. You can easily get a paperback book for less than $10, plus you can resell it. The Kindle’s delivery costs are far lower, so it’s hard to justify that price. One can infer that the book industry has pressured Amazon into a Faustian deal. Each digital e-book is highly DRM-infested, which means it you can’t use it as freely as you could a real paper book or a DRM-free book. Book publishers still haven’t learned from the music industry’s mistakes.

Nevertheless, Amazon offers a revolutionary product on par with the iPhone. They introduce a revolutionary business model where they subsidize the cost of high-speed wireless delivery of information through the price of the content. Although Sony also has an eBook reader, in terms of usability Amazon’s Kindle trumps it. The Kindle is the eBook done right (almost, it just needs fewer restrictions). Because of its uniqueness, Amazon can charge a premium, just as Apple did for the iPhone.

I don’t think I would buy this version of the Kindle. Given the thought put into this, the popularity of the device (Amazon is sold out), and the massive feedback they are getting from users, the next version of the device will improve. And not just in a superficial way. Yes, the price will improve, and yes, hopefully, they will ask an Apple designer to make the case more aesthetically pleasing. More importantly, other manufacturers will see and try to imitate this revolutionary device. They will provide competition, hopefully innovate even more, and ideally start freeing books from the shackles of DRM.

Disclaimer: I have owned Amazon in the past and may buy it before their next earnings call given this product. Also, I include affiliate links to Amazon in my posts.