The Amazon Kindle is a closed system based on defining the marketplace as a universe in which they exert total control. This was demonstrated last week, when two volumes (ironically, 1984 and Animal Farm) were “disappeared” from every Kindle in the country, without explanation.
I have to say, echoing Cory Doctorow, that my problems with the Kindle doesn’t ruin me for all of Amazon. Amazon is so huge, no one could possibly love everything about it, or hate everything about it either. Let’s say I hate the Kindle. But I have an Amazon Affiliates Store on my website. Even though I put it there mainly to display the writing texts I like (I’m not sure if I’ve ever gotten a sale off it) still, I am an Amazon affilate!
That said, I can’t get around my animosity to the kind of authoritarian control the Kindle represents. Fortunately, it’s a dictatorship without teeth, because there are already a number of alternatives and have been since before the K. The Kindle didn’t kill them and I’m glad–I value ownership of my books. I believe once you’ve sold something to me, it’s mind. You can’t just take it back without notice.
Anyway, sensing oppotrunity, Barnes and Noble hopped on the Amazon gaffe with a vengeance, capitalizing on the anti-Kindle backlash as the perfect moment to announce their own proprietary reader. Here’s a compact summary of the moment, from Wired:
Barnes & Noble is getting into the e-books business, all guns blazing, as it announced a new expanded e-book store that will be available across different devices such iPhone, BlackBerry and the yet-to-be released Plastic Logic e-reader (see right). The company’s e-book store will have more than 700,000 titles, compared to the 300,000 or so that its closest rival Amazon boasts. More than half-million public domain books from Google will also be part of Barnes & Noble’s electronic bookstore and can be downloaded for free, it said. Sony has a similar deal with Google to make the public domain books available for its e-book reader customers. But Amazon does not offer the free books to its Kindle customers.
Wow. B&N’s move strikes me as similar to a counterpunch thrown by a heavyweight who’s tired of being abused for 3 rounds, so he throws a thunderous right hook that turns the match around. Was real news made by Barnes & Noble besides na-na-na-boo-boo? It’s too early to say, but for the moment, the news sounds good to my ears. It’s a resounding commitment (gamesmanship or not) to the concept of multiplicity, a free and open ebook marketplace, and basic no-frills hardware to anchor it on.
To that I say…two cheers. I’ll add the third one when I have their reader in my hands and it does everything they say it will.
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