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Amazon's Kindle Sells Out In 5.5 Hours
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Wed Nov 21, 2007 06:22 PM
from the kindling-burns-quickly dept.
from the kindling-burns-quickly dept.
necro81 writes "As reported on Engadget, Amazon's Kindle e-book reader has sold out. Charlie Rose's interview with Jeff Bezos reveals that the Kindle sold out within just 5-1/2 hours of going on sale. Amazon hasn't revealed how many it had in stock at launch, so it may just be that they didn't anticipate early demand. A check of the Kindle's product page shows that more will be rolling out starting December 3rd." Wired also has a brief head-to-head of the more prominent ebook readers and PCWorld has a review of the new gadget from Amazon.
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News: Amazon's Ebook The Future of Reading? 354 comments
theodp writes "With a seven-page cover story on The Future of Reading, Newsweek confirms all those rumors of Amazon's imminent introduction an affordable ebook. Kindle, which is named to evoke the crackling ignition of knowledge, has the dimensions of a paperback, weighs 10.3 oz., and uses E Ink technology on a 6-inch screen powered by a battery that gets up to 30 hours from a 2-hour charge. Kindle's real breakthrough is its EVDO-like wireless connectivity, which allows it to work anywhere, not just at Wi-Fi hotspots. More than 88,000 titles will be on sale at the Kindle store at launch, with NYT best sellers priced at $9.99."
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Apple: Kindle Versus The iPhone 376 comments
Bernie Campbell writes "Forbes takes a look at the recently announced Kindle ebook from Amazon, and considers the possibility that Apple may have beaten them to the punch. 'Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs has a not-so-secret weapon when it comes time to load up the iPhone with content: Google ... Google's Book Search project has already pumped much of the world's printed matter into Google's servers. Downloads of classic titles, such as Bleak House, can already be had for free. Mix Apple's iTunes content distribution smarts with Google's vast storehouse of content, and you'll have an instant competitor to Kindle -- one with a touch interface and the ability to play movies and music, too.'
[+]
Entertainment: Hands-On With The Kindle 365 comments
Amazon's Kindle e-book may have sold out in record time, but there's still a lot of discussion about the device's merits. Neil Gaiman likes it well enough, but it's sent Robert Scoble into a fit of apoplectic rage. For a real, meaty, hands-on look at the way the device operates in everyday life, Gamers With Jobs writer Julian Murdoch has a slice of life with the Kindle. He takes us through his Thanksgiving holiday weekend with the device, noting the quirks (good and bad) that cropped up with Amazon's new toy. "Short of reading in the tub, the Kindle is easier to read in more places, positions, and situations than a physical book ... But it's far from perfect. It is expensive. The cover, which I find completely necessary, is in desperate need of more secure attachment (Velcro works great). The book selection is less-than-perfect, although I imagine this will improve with every passing day. And Amazon needs marketing help. The Kindle's launch reeked of 'get it out fast.' The big-picture marketing efforts (like video demonstrations and blurbs from authors) were great, but simple things like communicating how freakin' easy it is to get non-Amazon content on to the device, for free, remain horribly misunderstood."
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News: The Cult of Kindle 283 comments
DaMan writes "ZDNet's Hardware 2.0 blog is pondering the Kindle this week. There have been many attempts at an ebook reader in the past; why does Amazon think it can do any better? Given the high cost and DRM issues, will cachet be enough to win them financial success? Will the 'Cult of Kindle' help guarantee Amazon's success in the ebook reader market? 'A group of people willing to give it a five star rating just because someone else didn't, willing to back up every design, engineering and marketing decision that Amazon made, willing to defend the Kindle with their last dying breath. The Kindle doesn't cost money, it saves money. That 0.75 second flash as the pages turn isn't a downside because it gives you an opportunity to take in the previous page. It doesn't harm your eyes, in fact, it fixes them. Ergonomic issues that other reviewers have bought up are dismissed by the Cult of Kindle as flaws with the reviewer, not the device. The Kindle is perfect, and the Kindle 2.0 will be a little more perfect.'"
[+]
Ask Slashdot: Which eBook Reader is the Best? 469 comments
Mistress.Erin writes "I cannot decide between Amazon's Kindle and Sony's Reader. I've read some
reviews, but their motives can be somewhat suspect. So, I come to the most tech savvy group around to ask: which eBook reader is the best? If not Kindle or Reader, then what?" We've discussed this question before, but things have changed a bit since 2005.
[+]
Ask Slashdot: Have You Changed Your Opinion On eBook Readers? 569 comments
An anonymous reader writes "The Kindle made waves when it came out, but they've now had the chance to calm. How many of you have been using your eBook readers since you've received them? How many of you forgot you had one, and how many of you swear by your reader? I like my single-purpose (well, dual — music player) Sony Reader because I actually use it to read, rather than multitasking myself to death. Is this technology as convenient and useful as you expected?"
If not, what refinements or improvements would reKindle your interest?
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Low production run? (Score:5, Insightful)
I somehow doubt it is a case of 'we made lots, but demand outstripped supply'. More likely this was a limited production run to test the waters.
Re:Low production run? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
DRM Suckage (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:DRM Suckage (Score:5, Insightful)
Crack it.
Parent
Re:DRM Suckage (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? It is a joke. The BOM on the thing would run you less than $200 quantity one and I seriously doubt Amazon paid $100. Most of the sticker price is an all up front subscription to their cellular based wireless network that probably isn't even available out here in flyover country where I live. So if yuu don't value the handcuffs to the Amazon Store that why would you bother buying one just to hack it?
No, we need to design our own. There ain't squat in one hardware wise. No wireless (eats battery like crazy) and two SD slots (for easy copy action!) along with the ability to read PDF files. But first e-paper tech needs to finish developing. Current incarnations lack the resolution of a cheap laser printer, to say nothing of commercial printing and the screen refresh speeds blow goats. And color would really be helpful along with a touchscreen UI.
But like all things tech these issues will be solved after enough early adopters with big wallets and small brains spend insane amounts of cash on not ready for prime time hardware that won't even be compatible with whatever ends up becoming the standard. Then I'll buy one.
Parent
why bother? (Score:5, Interesting)
Better performance, and no vendor lockin.
Parent
Re:DRM Suckage (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, keep in mind that when they say "lifetime free access to Wikipedia," they don't really mean your lifetime, or even their lifetime, but merely the lifetime of their business model. If at some point down the road these things stop making money for them, that cell connection is going to stop working, too. (And given the short lifespans of cell technologies, I wouldn't expect this thing to work with the cell network for more than a few years, a decade at most, before Sprint forces an upgrade to some new system. I have piles of old handsets sitting around my house as a testament to these forced upgrades that they push through every so often.)
I think this thing is interesting, and it's the best effort at e-books so far, but it's still really, really bleeding edge. Personally I just can't justify shelling out four bills to be what seems suspiciously like a public beta.
Parent
I've been buying e-books for years (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:DRM Suckage (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:DRM Suckage (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to work at SGI (late 90's) and one of their ad slogans was ignite your mind and I think it had a picture of an octane (model name) sgi box there.
the thing is - we sold a lot of SGI boxes to gas and oil companies. 'igniting' from a computer is the last thing they'd want!
for a while, some SGI boxes (their power supplies) had a nasty habit of, well, blowing up or catching fire. the move team (who moved employees when we had our frequent re-orgs) would often have blown power supplies after we powered down systems and moved them, had them sit unused for a weekend and then powered up monday. I guess an always-on system being turned off, let sit and then powered on can cause strain.
PPFFFTT! "stand back, I'm about to power on an SGI box!"
ignite your mind. yeah - and your tie, if you are standing too close by to some of them.
Parent
Gullible much? (Score:5, Interesting)
It is however perfectly easy for a company to launch with a limited number of items received from the factory. This is a basic sales trick. Amazon ordered the production of the kindle, but that doesn't mean all the units arrive in one go, that itself would be extremely foolish, it would delay the launch and cost a lot of money to stock everything.
Say that a factory can produce 100 devices per day just as an example. You want to launch as soon as possible so you tell them, when you got 500 send them over, so I can launch. Then at launch those 500 are "sold out". Sure they are, but the factory has been busily producing so they in fact now got 700 more, but because sending small orders is uneconomical you told them to NOT send the daily production over, you told them to wait till they got a 1000.
Bam, you get a head line of being sold out while the factory has plenty.
The kindle ain't sold out because it is still in production. It is trivial to set this scenario up and Amazon should fire its marketting department if they hadn't set this up. It is a basic move. Make the item seem hot, so that people get the idea that they MUST buy it now or they may not have another chance.
Have you EVER sold anything? It doesn't matter what house you are looking at buying, they ALWAYS got an intrested party about to make a good offer, so if you are quick you might just beat them. Decide NOW!
Parent
Re:Low production run? (Score:4, Insightful)
Also while there are many people who don't read books regularly, the people that do usually appreciate owning a bookshelf of their favourite novels. I feel it'll make a great reference device for things like dictionaries, encyclopedias and newspapers.
My last point is that when reading a novel, the reader is usually put into a deeper level of thinking which is annoying to be pulled out from. I'm curious if the device has a trivial way to flip pages that doesn't require the user to mentally escape the novel everytime they want to turn the page. (Or other annoyances like being told they have new email mid-reading.)
Parent
Re:Low production run? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
So, I tried it (Score:5, Interesting)
The display is very crisp and clear and easy to read. It has a clear surface over the e-ink display... the effect is like reading a really, really flat piece of glossy paper. Yes, if you have very good vision you can see the pixels, but it's so very very high contrast that that's not a problem.
The unit is much more attractive in person than its photos make it look on the web. It's not beige, it's very white. It's slim, and the angularness of it is less obvious in person than on the web, unless you look at it from the end. It has a nice leather case that it goes in which makes it rather book-like in many respects. When you turn it off, it puts something interesting on the screen (remember, e-ink takes no power to display, only to change, so you can leave something on an "off" e-ink screen) and my friends quite like that. The UI is easy enough to use - a minute or two of poking at it and I'd figured it out more or less. The wireless connection works very well. He downloaded a sample chapter (yes, you can get free sample chapters) in mere seconds after he'd typed in the title.
Overall, I was pleasantly surprised with it, and immediately recommended it to my aunt, who has been searching for a good e-book reader for a few years.
Parent
Re:Low production run? (Score:5, Informative)
I haven't used the Kindle, but I have used the Sony eReader, which has a similar resolution, and it is *much* easier on the eyes than an LCD.
Parent
Re:Low production run? (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyway, the point the parent was making is that many people (including nearly all American book publishers) think that serif fonts are easier to read, especially for very long blocks of text. The problem is, computer screens still have comparatively low DPI, and aren't very good at rendering serifs, certainly not as good as they are with sans-serif fonts. This goes even moreso for a device made solely for reading text, even though it does indeed have a higher DPI than computer screens.
Of course, you're right that font preference varies from person to person. Myself, I almost exclusively use sans-serif fonts for screen reading, and prefer serif fonts for print. For example, those annoying "advertising" sections in magazines and newspapers often use a sans-serif font, and I find them much more difficult to read (fortunately they're also always devoid of content).
Anyway, given the specs for the Kindle (167 dpi), it should be able to do a pretty good Helvetica, assuming Amazon felt like getting a license from Linotype (the default serif font they use is also from Linotype, so it's possible).
Parent
Re:Low production run? (Score:5, Funny)
Only 1. It was bought 5.5 hours after launch by Jeff to ensure amazon.com was still up.
Parent
Re:Amazon rating (Score:4, Informative)
In all fairness though, just about all of the 1-star ratings seem to be from people who haven't even used the product yet.
Parent
Weird behavior between pages (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd like colour but for reading a book it does seem a bit redundant, but the Kindle can browse the internet as well. So really I expect to see colour in a future revision.
For now, the iPod Touch is the best reader/browser combination.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
the irex illiad can be modifiied(it runs linux) using it's own built in wifi and a web browser you can surf the web on it.
Now we just have to wait (Score:3, Insightful)
That's OK (Score:4, Insightful)
There's an old rule in the computer biz: Don't ever buy anything whose version number ends with an even digit.
Re:That's OK (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Two Things (Score:5, Insightful)
2. There are always people looking to profit from the above people, who jump on these product launches to then turn around and sell the product on Ebay.
Beyond that I wouldn't read too much into this just yet. The Kindle may be a success, or a flop. All we know is that it a newly hyped gadget that sold out at launch, like most new hot gadgets.
Front Page of Amazon (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically the best advertising that any device could have.
OMG all 3 units sold out in 5.5 hours!!!!! (Score:4, Funny)
2. Do not reveal how many (hand fulls) of product units are available
3. On day of initial sale, reveal that product was sold out in 4 hours!!!!
4. Let lame media pick up stories
5. Enjoy free advertizement & viral marketing
6. Pick another date to release a few more units
7. PROFIT!!!!
Looks good, but.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Either have cheap books or a cheap gadget, not both.
But then again... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm surprised it doesn't include "amazon email".
Parent
Re:But then again... (Score:5, Informative)
It does. Every Kindle has a unique email address.
Parent
As a Sony ebook user (Score:4, Interesting)
One of the things that really showed promise was having comic books delivered to the device. However, it never really panned out for Sony, one year on and there are only 14 items in the manga section, and Kindle isn't looking much better. The sample they gave with the Sony eReader actually looked pretty good in terms of readability, shame there isn't much content that I want on it though(I suppose I could go track down pdfs, but too much of a pain)
Re:As a Sony ebook user (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
I'm I wrong or the only one to notice the EvDO (Score:4, Interesting)
So, either I need to cut back on the beers and pay attention to which letters mean what, or this thing is actually kinda cool, not that I'm buying one this year. If I'm way wrong, mod me to nothing, but otherwise, man do people complain about anything here!
Re:I'm I wrong or the only one to notice the EvDO (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
nifty e-book reader comparison matrix (Score:5, Informative)
http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_Reader_Matrix [mobileread.com]
At first I was ready to buy... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think I would have paid up to $125, as I still need to actually buy books to read on it. But $400? Either the device is expensive to make or the market researchers grossly over estimated the publics need for such a device. $400 buys some really nice toys, much nicer than a e-book reader. I think I'm going to spend my money elsewhere this holiday season.
What a shame, too. I would really like to own one when they become reasonably priced.
Three hundred for a cheap one with no memory... (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone who buys one of these things now deservers to have "sucker" tattooed on their forehead -- these things look like they're made to rip people off with continual "upgrades" as they gradually turn into something useable.
The e-paper displays sound interesting, I suppose, but if I'm going to spend $800 on a linux gadget I'd want it to have the full functionality of a laptop... paying that much for a crippled laptop doesn't make a lot of sense to me...
In theory the Sony reader is what I'd rather have (Score:4, Informative)
That said, I would need a device with larger screen than either the kindle or the Sony gadget.
Why would Anyone Bother? (Score:5, Interesting)
Has nobody been paying attention to the many and various articles in recent years about "some random company" who decided to revoke their DRM product (new DRM, dropped product, company died, etc) and totally screw all their customers who had paid license fees to use this DRM functionality?
VOTE WITH YOUR WALLETS people.
I still say OLPC's XO laptop is better :) (Score:5, Insightful)
A bit bigger than the Kindle, sure, but sure seems like the one I'd rather have in my backpack / fallout shelter / carry-on bag. After all, does the Kindle have a game pad?
timothy
My display died in 3 hours! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Reading an LCD (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, they finally got that technology out of the lab about a couple of years ago.
Parent
Re:Reading an LCD (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Reading an LCD (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Kindle doesn't have an LCD (Score:4, Informative)
Kindle has an e-paper [wikipedia.org] display, which uses something resembling ink that can be turned black or white, or a few shades in between, and doesn't require any power to maintain that shade. It looks very similar to paper, and isn't color so the resolution is pretty good.
The Sony e-book reader also has an e-paper display, so LCDs aren't being used on new e-book readers.
Parent
Re:Kindle doesn't have an LCD (Score:5, Informative)
I've never bought a DRM afflicted text and I never will. But the hardware's a different matter; the fact that it can display DRM doesn't preclude the device as long as it can display free texts.
Sony is kind of schizophrenic; their hardware is usually excellent but sometimes crippled by the media lobe of the company. In the case of the Sony Reader the hardware was left relatively unharmed, but the marketing of the device was absolutely crippled; they were so keen to push their online book store that most people don't realise it can display unencumbered texts just fine.
The Sony Reader is pretty damn good, though not perfect. For example, it doesn't have a page turn button on the right hand side more or less forcing you to hold it in your left hand or uncomfortably in your right. The iRex Iliad looks excellent, but it's pricier and the form-factor doesn't appeal to me.
Parent
Re: (Score:3)
Re:I was interested until (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:I was interested until (Score:4, Insightful)
What's with these companies and "special" lockins? Why do they crave control over items they sell so much?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Amazon is not (yet) like Apple, Sony, etc where they can just push a button and have 100,000 devices made and shipped.
I