By Peter Stuart
Smith (AKA Max Adams, James Barrington, James Becker, Tom Kasey, Jack Steel and
Thomas Payne)
It’s not really my fault, but the future of publishing is
what most people in the industry seem to be talking about at the moment, when
they’re not wishing they’d written Fifty
Shades instead of EL James and were banking the better part of a million
pounds every week. And that’s not a misprint.
Instead of
looking at new books and what authors are up to at the moment – the two core
components of the industry – most of the comments I’ve seen lately are still
far more concerned with the industry as a whole: what does the future hold for
agents, publishers and especially for bookshops? The general consensus seems to
be that independent bookshops will probably survive, albeit in much smaller
numbers than at present, and in order to attract and retain their customers
they will have to offer far more to them than just a bunch of books sitting on
shelves. They’ll have to do the kind of things that Amazon simply can’t compete
with, like offering coffee and cakes and comfy seats while people browse,
organizing book signings, author visits and book readings.
And talking
about Amazon, the literal ‘elephant in the room’, there will undoubtedly be
competition in the future for the bookselling giant, and especially for its
single bestselling item, the Kindle. And it looks like the most serious
competition to this device will come from the Nook, produced by Barnes &
Noble, and especially given the fact that Microsoft has taken a stake in the
company, which means that Barnes & Noble now has both serious money and technological
know-how behind it.
Which seems
like an appropriate moment to mention Amazon’s latest electronic product, the
Kindle Fire. I’ve yet to handle one of these devices or even see it in the
flesh, but I have to say that I’m not entirely convinced it’s going to enjoy
anything like the runaway success of the Kindle itself.
The beauty
of the Kindle is that it quite literally provides a library in your pocket.
With a capacity of up to 3,500 books, a battery that needs charging only once
every three or four weeks, and the ability to download new books wirelessly
almost everywhere, it’s very difficult to see why anybody who enjoys reading
doesn’t own one. It even makes good financial sense, because of the huge number
of ebooks available for free or for under about £3, in contrast to the typical
RRP of a paperback novel of around £6.99.
But the
Kindle Fire is a very different animal. The most obvious difference is the
colour screen on the Fire, and the fact that this device is far more than just
a way of reading books. It’s essentially a tablet computer – a long way from
being my favourite device – with a seven inch screen that also allows the user
to play music, watch films, read colour magazines and a bunch of other things.
All of which does, in my opinion, beg the question: why would you want to? Do
you really want to sit down and watch a movie on a seven inch screen wearing
earphones?
OK,
probably some people do. On trains I quite often see people hunched over mobile
phones squinting at the tiny screen while some action sequence is displayed on
it, to the accompaniment of tinny music leaking from their earphones. God knows
what that does to your eyes after a while, but I suppose for these people the
jump to the Fire’s much larger screen would be huge improvement. But it will of
course mean that they would have to carry both a mobile phone and the Fire.
On the
pricing side, it’s not a bad deal, especially when compared to the ludicrously
expensive iPad, with the 32GB Fire coming in at only £199, about half the price
of the entry-level iPad, and doing pretty much the same things in a far more convenient package.
But I
think the biggest problem with the Fire is going to be the battery life. Amazon
is claiming that the battery will last for 11 hours. For anybody familiar with
claims made by computer companies, that number will be taken with a very large
pinch of salt, and probably a more realistic estimate would be 8 to 9 hours,
depending on usage. And that, no matter how you much you dress it up, is simply
pathetic when compared to the original Kindle.
So if you
are thinking about buying one of the new devices principally to read books, don’t
bother. Get the old-style one, and you won’t regret it for a moment. But if you
really are the kind of person who wants to sit by yourself in a corner
somewhere, watching a film on a screen you can cover with the palm of your
hand, without a doubt the Fire will be a far better buy for you than the iPad.
On the
other hand, maybe you should just get out more …
You can contact me at:
Twitter: @pss_author
Facebook: Peter Stuart Smith
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