Hasta La Gadget!

Amazon has its own applied theory of special relativity, in the sense that we never really know definitive sales figures and instead have to rely on the occasional ratio and comparative figure (based upon aforementioned unknown variables) to glean any sense of success. Jeff Bezos and company are happy to announce the latest Kindle has, in its three months or so since release, surpassed sales of the previous device in its 2009 holiday season (the shopping-heavy October through December period) — in other words, it expects even greater sales for this year’s equivalent quarter, but it can’t exactly time travel to report on the future (yet). Ready for more? Amazon’s also boasting that, for its top 10 bestselling books, Kindle digital books are outselling print (both hardcover and paperback combined) at a rate “great than 2 to 1.” We’re going to guess those are better figures than its tipping point back in July, but Mass-Sales Equivalence was never our strong suit in college. More fun factoids and artistic displays of applied statistics can be found in the press release after the break.

Continue reading Kindle books outselling print 2 to 1 for Amazon’s top 10 bestsellers, and other relatively positive sales figures

Kindle books outselling print 2 to 1 for Amazon’s top 10 bestsellers, and other relatively positive sales figures originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Oct 2010 12:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Superpower sounds can define a comic book hero as much as any form-fitting costume, and when a character is drafted to the silver screen the sound comes with him—but how do they bring these made-up sounds along? More »

The knock on Borders’ E Ink reader at launch was that unlike the Kindle, Nook, or Sony entries, it had no wireless access. The new Kobo Wireless adds that to the mix, along with three color options, as Gadget Lab’s Charlie Sorrel reported this morning.

The new Kobo also keeps its pricing low: $139, identical to the Wi-Fi-only Kindle, $10 less than the Wi-Fi Nook. Kobo’s e-books are also priced competitively compared to the Nook and Kindle stores. Finally, the Kobo costs $40 less than the similarly multi-colored Sony’s Pocket Edition. Like the first Kobo, the Sony has no network capability — but importantly, it does have an optical touchscreen.

Ultimately, the big problem I foresee with the new Kobo isn’t the network gap but the interface gap, particularly as it adds the ability to browse and buy books online. One reason the first Kobo didn’t have an on-board bookstore was that adding that functionality to the device typically commits the manufacturer to including some key hardware. But check out a picture of the Kobo from the front and tell me what you don’t see:

That’s right — still no keyboard, just a big five-way controller button.

Now, the Kobo’s store and library navigation look very nice, and I’m sure many people will appreciate the added ability to wirelessly browse best-sellers and genre categories. But the key advantages of shopping in a digital bookstore for most of us are:

1) a gigantic selection, bigger than any physical bookstore;
2) the ability to search for and quickly find EXACTLY the book you want to buy.

Text entry on the Kindle and Nook are not fantastic, but they work. And you can search for and buy e-books on the web site or using the desktop application, but that negates most of the benefits of being able to buy over Wi-Fi. Without 3G, you can’t buy books anywhere; without a built-in web browser, I don’t really see much other use for Wi-Fi connectivity.

Those are the trade-offs that Borders has chosen for Kobo — and the tradeoffs you’d have to weigh as a Kobo Wireless owner. Me, if I had my heart set on hot pink, I’d spend the extra scratch and get the Sony. If I’m giving up on network access and text entry to browse virtual bookshelves, I at least want to be able to flick through them with my fingertips rather than using a Nintendo controller.

Update: Kobo CEO Mike Serbinis chimed in in the comments to this post to note that on the company’s new readers, “there is a virtual keyboard to search for authors, titles, etc. It’s easy to use, and keeps the industrial design clean & simple and focused on reading vs typing, or accidentally hitting a button which does happen often on other devices.”

All images via Borders.com.

See Also:

• Sony Pocket E-Reader Combines Touchscreen, E Ink
• Sony Takes on the Kindle With Touchscreen E-Readers
• How to Do (Almost) Everything With a Kindle 3
• Wi-Fi Only Nook for $150 in Best Buy
• $150 Kobo eReader: The Real Kindle Killer?
• Kobo E-readers Offered to Hotel Guests
• Kobo Updates E-Reader with Wi-Fi, Price-Drop

Kindle DX Promotional Photo from Amazon.com

It’s easy to figure out why e-readers and tablets are the size that they are: They’re all about the size of paperback books, whether trade (iPad) or mass-market (the Kindle 3). Some oversized models, like the Kindle DX, are closer to big hardcovers. But why are books the size that they are? It turns out it’s because of sheep. Sheepskin, to be exact.

Carl Pyrdum, who writes the blog Got Medieval while he finishes his Ph.D. in Literature at Yale, has the skinny on book sizes. You see, before Europeans learned how to make paper from the Arabs (who’d learned it from the Chinese), books were made from parchment, which was usually made from sheepskin. Sometimes, they’d use calfskin, too; if it was really primo stuff, it was called vellum. Like reading a whole book made out of veal.

We eventually mostly gave up on parchment, because it was expensive, and hard to work with. (There’s a reason medieval monks wrote manuscripts; preparing the parchment was penance.) But all of today’s book sizes (and by proxy, most of our gadget sizes) were established in the Middle Ages, and printers and paper makers carried them over. Booksellers and publishers still use these terms today:

• Fold a sheet of parchment once (two leaves/four pages per sheet) for a folio; if you fold sheets of paper once without a cover, you’ve got a tabloid.
• Twice for a quarto (8pp/s), the size of a big dictionary or big laptop;
• Three times for an octavo (16pp/s), a hardcover or Kindle DX;
• Four times for a duodecimo (24 pp/s), a trade paperback/iPad
• Four times (a slightly different way) for a 16mo (yes, they gave up), aka mass-market paperback/e-reader;
• Five times for a 32mo, aka notepad/old-school smartphone sized
• Six times for a 64mo, or as Erasmus called it, a Codex Nano.

All images via Got Medieval.

Story continues …

Amazon’s third major iteration of its flagship reading device, the Kindle, comes out of the gate looking strong: the new graphite finish (just like its big brother, the Kindle DX) with a slimmer, lighter form factor, plus a bumped refresh rate for its E Ink screen. Best of all, the WiFi only and 3G readers have newly lowered prices (though they’re still not exactly bargain basement level). We’ve spent the past few days putting the tinier Kindle through the paces to see just how much Amazon’s improved it. Though the market is increasingly flooded with cheap readers, the Kindle is arguably still the leading name in the field, and Amazon is already touting the third model as its bestselling ever — even though there are still no sales figures to be had. So, is this the best Kindle ever? Read on to find out.

Continue reading Amazon Kindle review (2010)

Amazon Kindle review (2010) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Aug 2010 13:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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