10 Reasons iPad Will Not Kill Kindle

Caveat: before half of you get your shorts in a bunch, tomor­row’s post will be: Top 10 Rea­sons Why iPad Means Kin­dle Is Dead. With that said, have at it!

10.) Tak­ing read­ing from a sim­ple print­ed page to an e‑book envi­ron­ment such as the Kin­dle is a great step for­ward. Its ease of use, porta­bil­i­ty and stor­age are ide­al for read­ers. No more inno­va­tions need­ed!

9.) The enjoy­ment of read­ing has always tak­en place with­in a reader’s mind. This is both why read­ing is great and why the words on the page don’t need to be in flashy col­ors or fea­ture fan­cy graph­ics.

8.)  Added cost of iPad and $30/month fee for 3G from AT&T (the real­is­tic cost) make Kin­dle a bet­ter deal. Enough said.

7.) Every­one hates AT&T, their 3G ser­vice is spot­ty at best, and NO ONE who’s buy­ing a 3G iPad will use less than 250MB a month, so the $14.95 price point for 3G is use­less!

6.) Glare/e‑ink. You can always read dur­ing the day­time with your Kin­dle. Take it to the beach, read in broad day­light. e‑ink is sim­ply eas­i­er on read­ers’ eyes than back-lit pix­els.

5.) There’s no need for a device that fits between lap­top and smart phone. Both are extreme­ly portable and serve dif­fer­ent pur­pos­es. If I want to curl up in bed with a movie or the web, I can use my lap­top for that already. If I want to curl up in bed and read, I can use my Kin­dle!

4.) Apps! That’s right: The new open­ing up of Amazon’s Kin­dle for­mat to app devel­op­ers will mean a lot more ver­sa­til­i­ty on the device. Once a few folks come along and devel­op email clients or web browsers for the Kin­dle, Kin­dle will become even more use­ful as a poten­tial smart phone substitute—the niche that iPad seems intent on fill­ing.

3.) The new price-shar­ing announce­ment (70% publisher/30% Ama­zon) for Ama­zon’s Dig­i­tal Text Plat­form (DTP) makes Kin­dle more attrac­tive once again to all the pow­ers that be in pub­lish­ing. If they can get this pesky text-to-speech bat­tle cleared up, things will be even bet­ter.

2.) Big pub­lish­ing is cur­rent­ly doing so much of their sales through Ama­zon, that they might be afraid to car­ry busi­ness over to Apple. Sure, they will sell books there, but keep in mind that Apple might have to keep prices in the iBook store high­er than at Ama­zon.

1.) “I love my Kin­dle!” –Seri­ous­ly, a lot of read­ers are devot­ed to these devices, includ­ing me. I’ve found a nice cov­er that makes the Kin­dle easy to hold. I real­ly like the ease of buying/storing books on it. And I just want a plain, sim­ple device to use for read­ing.

The opin­ions expressed above are not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Open Cul­ture or the author.

Up next (tomor­row): Top 10 Rea­sons Why iPad Means Kin­dle is Dead

Seth Har­wood is a vora­cious read­er, sub­ver­sive pub­lish­ing maven and crime nov­el­ist. His next book Young Junius will be avail­able from Tyrus Books this fall. He’s sure to have some crazy pro­mo­tions going at his site this spring as well.