Experimenting with my Kindle

I have not been using my Kindle much of late. My daughter Claire had been using it a lot for her College work, but now that she is finished I get my Kindle back. I have recently just added a book on Statistics to help me with a new module I am teaching at NCI, but I also look at the same book on my iPad which I am using more. At the moment I am doing quite a bit of writing, so have decided not to get involved in reading any books and devote the time instead to writing.

The Amazon Kindle.
Image source: Amazon.co.uk.

Last evening I experimented with the Kindle. I use Microsoft Word for all writing that I do (apart from this Blog). I knew that the Kindle supports documents in Word and I had in the past uploaded work documents to bring to meetings, (using the iPad's Kindle App instead of the Kindle itself). I have written before here about the Kindle format and how easy a book is to read on the Kindle device. So I wondered what my own writing efforts would look like as an eBook on the Kindle.

Uploading any document to a Kindle is very easy. I logged on to Amazon.com and simply added the book from my desktop to my Kindle Library by emailing it to my Kindle account. Amazon takes care of the rest - it was almost immediately available on my Kindle. With a little excitement, I read my own writing on a Kindle for the first time.

This whole process is a symptom of the change that is taking place in Publishing, which has been revolutionized by Amazon. Authors can for the first time "see" what their books/articles would look like long before they are considered for publishing. For the only book I have published, An Introduction to Business Systems Analysis, it was not until a camera ready copy in PDF format was created by my publisher (The Liffey Press) that I was able to see what my book would look like. The Kindle now gives me an opportunity to see what my own book looks like to potential readers, and this allows me to make changes that may not be so obvious in a Word document. I spotted some typos and formatting issues, but also read some text that did not make sense or could be written better. I now plan to upload my script after completing each chapter and read it as an eBook to help improve it even more.

Kindle vs iPad eBook Reader - my view

I have just finished reading my second book ever on an eBook reader. Last Christmas I was given the Amazon Kindle as a gift and I read Dava Sobel's "Galileo's Daughter" (see my review here). Despite a lot of errors in the Kindle version of the book, I found the reading experience a very good one. Yesterday I finished reading Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" on the Apple iPad - which I had downloaded for free from the Kindle store. 

Image link to DigitalTrends.

There is no doubt that as a tablet computer, the iPad exceeds almost everything that the Kindle does. The one thing that it does not do better is the Kindle eBook reader App. While I found that Dava Sobel's "Galileo's Daughter" was formatted a bit better on the iPad, the Kindle is a far better reading experience for me. It is lighter and easier to hold while reading - but crucially the text is far clearer and the background softer to make it very comfortable and easy on the eyes. Yesterday I tried reading the iPad in the Conservatory, but the alternating rain and sunshine made it difficult to see because of the glare during bright sunshine. Now that I am about to get my Kindle back (my daughter has had it for weeks) I expect that it will be my preferred choice for reading from now on. The good thing is that when you buy a book from Amazon, you can get it on both the Kindle and iPad at no extra charge.

"Pride and Prejudice" is, to my almost certain knowledge, the only book I have ever read twice. The other book was George Orwell's "1984" which I had read in school during the 1970s, and read again in the year 1984. P&P was the main English text for the Intermediate (Junior) Certificate exam in 1975. It's an excellent story that I have also seen many times on TV and film. The English prose is difficult to follow sometimes - I wonder if people really spoke like the dialogue in the book all the time in the early 1800s? Nevertheless, it was very enjoyable to read the book again and feel the presences of two of  English literature's strongest and most favourite characters - Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy. In 2003, P&P came second in the BBC's The Big Read, a national poll to find Britain's best-loved book" (Lord of the Rings was 1st).

Christmas 2011

It's St Stephen's Day - and Christmas 2011 is over. I love Christmas Day! We had a very early start (0700) to open pressies. Santa brought me an Amazon Kindle! I also have Walter Isaacson's book on Steve Jobs in paperback - lots of interesting reading ahead.

With my new Kindle (and new jumper!)
showing page 244 of my own book.
An Introduction to Business Systems Analysis.

So far I love the Kindle - it's the 3G/WiFi/Keyboard version that I have. I find it very easy to use, and crucially - very easy to read from. I downloaded some free books at first - Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen), The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, and the Bible. I also copied over some free eBooks that I have gathered over the years, eg "Knowing Knowledge" by George Siemens. Plus I have also copied over a few PDF files that I have had for some time (which I have not paid for). My intention is not to read these again, but I really like the idea that I have a searchable copy of these texts at all times.

My first purchase from Amazon was Dava Sobel's Galileo's Daughter - which I plan to read while travelling to Spain tomorrow for a few days. This will be the first time that I will not bring any paper books or newspapers with me when travelling - I want to see how I get on with the Kindle. 

As a piece of technology the Kindle is so far for me a wonderful gadget. Amazon pay for the 3G connection, so you don't need a sim card to use it. With WiFi - the connection is really quick, my purchase of the Dava Sobel book above was downloaded to the Kindle automatically in seconds! It holds up to 3,500 books - so I expect to keep adding to this over the next few years. Imagine having your own library in your pocket? I will no doubt blog about this in the near future - but I'm certain that the Kindle, and other such devices, have the potential to revolutionalize knowledge by having access to libraries of books and documents at our finger tips. This could also be the beginning of the end for book stores who are likely to go in the same direction towards extinction as is happening to travel agents and record shops.