Shaking up the nascent market for electronic books for the second time in two months, Amazon.com will begin selling e-books for reading on Apple’s popular iPhone and iPod Touch.
Starting Wednesday, owners of these Apple devices can download a free application, Kindle for iPhone and iPod Touch, from Apple’s App Store. The software will give them full access to the 240,000 e-books for sale on Amazon.com, which include a majority of best sellers.
The move comes a week after Amazon started shipping the updated version of its Kindle reading device. It signals that the company may be more interested in becoming the pre-eminent retailer of e-books than in being the top manufacturer of reading devices.
First Look video: Kindle for iPhone
First Look video: Kindle for iPhone
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13549_7-10188891-30.html
10 million devices to read Kindle books on
Several articles indicate that Apple has sold 10 million iPhones. That is a big market of people that can buy Kindle ebooks.
E-books lost on Kindle, found on iPod Touch
When I misplaced my Kindle last year, I not only lost the device, but also any means of reading several e-books that I was in the middle of.
That all changed on Wednesday. My Kindle is no closer to home, but by downloading the new Kindle app for the iPhone (which also works on my iPod Touch), I was able to recover access to my virtual library. Not only that, but thanks to Whispersync, I was able to start reading right where I left off. Whispersync is Amazon’s technology for keeping one’s place in a book across multiple Kindles or cell phones.
Although I don’t think the “I lost my Kindle” crowd is the target market, I must say it was very satisfying to wake up Wednesday once again having access to books that had seemed lost.
Full piece here: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10188193-56.html
A question of backing up
When I brought this point up on the Amazon Kindle boards, someone told me that you can back up your books to your harddrive. So… are you actually able to do that or have you tried? And I suppose backing it up would be pointless if you didn’t have a way of reading the books on your computer?
I guess I’m annoyed that someone could lose access to what they bought if something happened to the reader.
I think that would be the sticking point for me if I ever had to decide if I wanted to buy a Kindle.
cathy
Not a Kindle user but…
As long as Amazon sticks around, you don’t lose access to the material–as Bibliofuture found out when his Kindle disappeared.
Your Kindle account gives you access to it, and you can download it to a new Kindle or iPhone (up to X times…).
Of course, if Amazon ceases to exist (or shuts down Kindle), all bets are off. As with many other purely-digital purchases, you’re buying access for some indeterminate period of time; you’re not really buying the item.
Amazon’s E-Book Service
David Pogue at the NYT:
I don’t mean to turn this column into All E-Books, All the Time. But Amazon pulled a nice one-two P.R. punch. Two weeks ago, it released its Kindle 2 electronic book reader, and announced that its catalog of electronic books had hit 240,000 titles. You can download them wirelessly to the Kindle, via the Sprint cellular network, whenever it suits your fancy.
Full commentary:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/05/technology/personaltech/05pogue-email.html?em