The Demise of Paper: Amazon’s Kindle

For years, my eyes glazed over when my publisher, Bill Newlin at Avalon Travel, would enthuse about coming high-tech and futuristic trends in the book business. I am Mr. Paper. I want a ripped-out chapter of a guidebook in my pocket. I want to curl up with the PAPER on Sunday morning. (Although I must admit, as I walk down hallways of hotels on Sunday mornings and see a New York Timesthe size of a tree stump at each door, the sheer bulk of paper/printing/transporting has me questioning the rationality of the traditional model.)

Then, six months ago, I was invited to Amazon.com headquarters for a marketing meeting. I expected just a normal brainstorming session about how we could pump up our sales. For instance, we produced a videoabout how I research my books that landed on their site as well as ours.

Suddenly I was talking to a very important circle of Amazon people. (They had the passion, urgency, and secrecy that I imagine came with the Manhattan Project during WWII.) As is my defensive demeanor when pooh-poohing the push for an electronic book, I was light, goofy, and (I imagine) annoyingly cocky. They made me sign a legal promise of secrecy, and I was taken into a special room. Someone came in carrying a package with the importance you’d expect from a donated kidney at the last possible moment. And then it was revealed to me: Amazon’s secret weapon…the Kindle. It sank in — this was a big deal.

It was turned on. And the moment I held it, so was I. It was a remarkable moment. I actually felt that I was holding the future. With its lambskin cover, it’s cuddly enough to take to bed. And thanks to its magically newsprint-like (rather than backlit) screen, my eyes saw it like a printed page of paper. I turned the page by touching a tab. (I can even imagine that in the future, “turning a page” will be an anachronism.) No larger than a single paperback, the Kindle can hold 200 books. With its Wi-Fi, you can program it to automatically download whatever newspaper, magazine, or blog you subscribe to. And, of course, you can buy books from Amazon for $9.99 with same ease and speed that we buy songs from iTunes for $0.99. My first thought was, “Amazon deserves to make a lot of money off of this.”

The skeptic became an evangelist…but I couldn’t tell anyone. Now I can. I’m generally the last to embrace something trendy, but I get to be a “beta user” of the Kindle. “Digital paper” will never be paper. But I think I can now actually look forward to the demise of the paper book and newspaper.

My publisher has created an electronic prototype (a combo-guidebook to London and Paris) as an experiment with Amazon to sell an electronic guidebook. It wouldn’t surprise me if printed guidebooks will follow music CDs out of our lives in the next generation.

Comments

28 Replies to “The Demise of Paper: Amazon’s Kindle”

  1. Rick This is great news. You could supply your books as a whole or even allow us to put together the parts we want and make our own book, for a fee. And it would be the ultimate in traveling light. On some long 6 week trips I took about 7 of your books to cover all the places properly. Somewhat costly and very heavy to carry. Great info of course but I did not need all the info in each of the 7 books. Keep up a great blog. It gets better all the time.

  2. I read with interest when the Kindle came out last week. Unfortunately it lacks some ease-of-use features that I think will make it a “have to have” device. I really want it to be touch screen — the current way to selecting things on-screen is really cumbersome. I appreciate the early adopters who will get the bugs out of and pay the high price, as they pave the way for the rest of us to join in later. I do look forward to having your guide books accessible from such a device. (When I was in Europe in 2000 I had a Palm III device loaded up with novels, and it wasn’t the easiest thing to read.)

  3. Lonely Planet has recently piloted a few South America titles online available chapter by chapter in PDF format (a few dollars per chapter depending on length. As an avdi RS guide reader I think it would be great to have that sort of option with your books too in the future – if you went PDF/Digital. Right now I pref a hard (soft cover) copy to mark up or hold – but since you are heading this way with your publisher – it would be nice to be able to buy chapters too (like music cds and like Lonley Planet started). thank

  4. I agree with both Chris and Ken. The price is too high and the functionality too limited. I will not be an early adapter. However I look forward eagerly to the upgrades and eventual model that will make this both more affordable and user friendly. As an avid reader who packs 5-6 paperbacks when I travel for a couple of weeks and a travel guidebook user, I would love to have such an electronic gadget to load up many books and guide books as well. Then I really might be able to take everything onboard and not have to check a bag. There is a great future for electronic books.

  5. They’re asking $400 for a book that you can’t tear pages out of and pass on to travelers going the other way? Do you really want ETBD to be a book that can’t be lent?

  6. I think the Kindle will be the next ipod in terms of revolutionizing a medium. Sure it is just version 1 right now but think of the first generation ipod, the Kindle will evolve in a similar fashion and in 3-4 years most people will have one. I will miss being able to spot everyone carrying your guidebooks around. I guess we will just have to assume that everyone with a Kindle is reading Rick Steves!

  7. Cool. I admit to being a bit of a dinosaur. I don’t own an IPOD, a GPS, or a watchamacallit. But this sounds right up my alley. Especially if it is cozy enough to snuggle with at bedtime. Right now I have a giant pile of books on my bedside table. They teeter precariously and will one day fall over and crush me. So the Kindle might possibly save my life. That and I’ll be able to take 10 or 15 books with me on the U-bahn in the morning. And I’ll be able to say “I heard it from Rick Steves first.”

  8. The price will be below $200.00 by next Christmas. This item will become as mainstream as cel phones within the next ten years.

  9. The WiFi features on the Kindle will surely add some radio frequency polution. But what’s a little more RF radiation gonna hurt, right? Anyways, minus the WiFi feature, it sounds alright. I’ll follow Rick Steves anywhere! ;)

  10. Have to agree…”electronic ink” is incredible, but for $400 plus $10 per book (which is more than many paperbacks), and a lack of color? I don’t know. Give it five years or so, and I’m sure they’ll be as ubiquitous as iPods. They’d be one in the same, I’m sure, if ebook readers didn’t require such a large screen for comfortable reading. It’s just unfortunate that book publishers are taking the same route as music publishers, and charging nearly identical prices in spite of nil distribution cost. I’m sure we can look forward to students being gouged $100 a pop for purely electronic college textbooks in the very near future.

  11. Rick, your book’s content led me to europe in 1995. Your books go with me now to europe-your tours or my independent travel. We will love to have electronic options to use, update and mix with lonely plant, rough guide, frommers, etc in the same format. Traveling on and reading. Larry from springfield

  12. I like the idea of being able to cart a whole bunch of my books with me when I travel, but not to have a paper guidebook??? What if you’re in the middle of Europe, without said paper guidebook, trying to find a specific address but not having written down any directions because you have your trusty Kindle, and all of a sudden the Kindle batteries go dead or you just have a general malfunction of the thing?

  13. RIP Low Tech I am sure that Kindle is a technological tour du force, and logically opens a new market for ETBD (may its market penetration increase). I know what I’d do with one of these gizmos, though: drop it. Or lose it. Ouch. I need one of these like I need color photos in my next Rick Steves guide. Or maps that try to show everything (but are still inferior to the free maps from the TI). Still I understand from Rick’s previous post the unstoppable economic logic of having more stuff in more books with fatter spines (and mark-ups) that more bookstores will want to put on their shelves. So technology and commerce will proceed apace, but I expect to miss the slimmer Rick Steves guides (printed on paper in glorious black and white), much as I do the French Franc and the strong dollar.

  14. Rick, since you seem like a progressive guy, I’ve always wondered why you don’t sell your guidebooks in a downloadable, electronic format (like a secured Adobe Acrobat PDF file)? I know you say “rip out my guidebook pages and take it with you.” Well, I can’t – it’s just sacrilegious. What if I want to use the book again? It would be far more convenient (and save trees) to purchase a PDF from your web site and print out only the pages that I need. Better yet, sometimes I have the laptop with me and it would be awesome to have an electronic searchable guidebook at my fingertips.

    The Amazon device is cool, but right now it seems to be a one-trick pony. I already carry a ton of electronic junk with me when I travel – phone, camera, ipod, laptop sometimes, etc. plus all the chargers. The Kindle is just another high-priced device that could either be stolen or broken accidentally. Give me a PDF and let me print out pages as I need them!

  15. I agree with you Enrique. When I travel, I rip up my books and then pass on to other travelers the sections I’m done with. Also, I like to write notes in my travel books on places I’m about to visit. As a bus commuter, I will definitely be interested in the Kindle, once it becomes more affordable (i.e., $100-$150 range).

  16. Rick, I just read your CNN article on Greece and must say it was very nice…you wrote…”Many tourists spend their entire time in Greece just island-hopping, setting foot on the mainland only to fly in and out of Athens, but there’s much more to see, learn and experience in this ancient land.”

    You make it sound so spectacular,,,cannot wait for your book…

  17. Wow how amazing technology is. My husband and are a bit “challenged” when it comes to technology, but we carried around 7 Rick Steves book for our year long trip to Europe. They were the heaviest thing in our bags. This might be a great idea for us for our long trips.

  18. Rick–wanna sell another 2 trips per year for the next 10 yrs–add single supplements. I’m no grouch/complainer but at 50 I’m not interested in ‘stranger’ roommates… I often can’t sleep and will read late into the night-don’t want to worry about keeping a roomie up…

  19. I would LOVE it if your guidebooks were available on a Kindle (of course once the price point comes down). Lugging a few guidebooks and other books to read on trips just adds too much weight to the backpack. Follow another commercial slogan Rick, “Just do it!”.

  20. Those who are asking for a single supplement are missing one thing–nothing stops you from booking two spots on the tour, one for you and one to protect you from having roommates. The problem isn’t the lack of single supplement; its that the price is higher than you want to pay.

  21. Rick, yes, please on electronic versions of your books! No, please, on PDFs! They don’t work that well with many ebook readers without conversion. And if you do a Kindle version, please do a Mobipocket version as well, for those of us who prefer a different eInk reader. Also with Mobipocket it can be downloaded to a variety of mobile phones, BlackBerrys, etc. Before I travel now, I do a lot of advance work and make a lot of notes that are entered into my Treo. It’s the best “traveling light” trick I’ve found so far. I love the idea of downloading sections of your books to my Treo to carry around with me while I’m traveling. Perhaps there’s a way to make it so that we can buy the full ebook (or pbook) and then download the sections we want to bring with us?

  22. I am so excited that you may be making your books available on Kindle! I plan to visit Austria and Germany in the Fall and have already bought your paperbacks, but I would love to download ebooks to my Kindle for easy transport! How can we find out when they will become available? I hope it will be in time for my trip!

  23. I hope that you decide to put all your books on the Kindle, as I am planning a trip with your outfit to Rome and Venice–not London and Paris…at least not yet. I think the Kindle versions would sell just a well as the others once they are posted.

  24. I have a kindle, and I love it. Yes it is a bit pricey, but when you can get your latest fix of your favorite author that’s just come out in hardback (and isn’t available anywhere yet) for the paperback price, the cost seems to go way down. It’s a perfect solution to lugging heavy travel books around, or tearing out pages. Since you can search using the Kindle, you can find that elusive reference to the obscure museum you so much wanted to see. So I am looking forward to having Rick Steves’ books on the Kindle. Go for it Rick…

  25. I would like all your books in Kindle edition. They seem easy to read and search. The one drawback is the maps which I see are shown first in whole, and then split in two. These are not easy to decipher. What I may do is photocopy the maps only and carry them with me. I wonder if a PDF version, downloadable from your Website as a [free] supplement to the Kindle books would work by being able to zoom in and out. I haven’t tested PDF’s. I have a post on the Travelers’ Helpline on this subject at: http://www.ricksteves.com/graffiti/helpline/index.cfm/rurl/topic/41146/kindle-versions-of-rick-steves-and-others-guides-to-europe.html

Comments are closed.