How I got a preview of the Kindle 3 – and totally geeked out

As for Kindles only lasting a few years- they may introduce a new version, but the beauty of computers as appliances is they will last as long as their battery and 120 volts hang around. I have an ipod from the beginning of ipods; the only reason I haven't repaired the battery is I no longer depend on it to listen to music.

Lastly, before you worry if your Kindle will last for the decades-to-centuries range, and elect to use books instead, recall that books themselves must be carefully printed, stored and used to last 50 years.

In some circumstances, you can even go a step further now. I stopped buying music about a year ago when I got a Spotify account and now 80-90% of my listening is through that.

I realized that most of my listening is to new/ephemeral stuff rather than stuff I want to listen to for years in which case, I'll just buy those albums if/when Spotify takes a dive.

Therefore, my rule is this: I only use the Nook to read things which are public domain. There's more than enough public domain stuff I want to read out there to keep me occupied. But if I'm going to pay for something, it's gonna be a proper printed physical book which I can keep for the rest of my life.

In the future, I think I'll be reading books on my kindle, and then I'll consider whether the book merits a meatspace presence in my life. If so, I'll pick up a copy.

In the end, I'll likely have fewer books on my shelves, but what I do have will be a more meaningful representation of my tastes and values.

And I delight in having a book that's perfect for lending (usually means gifting) to a friend or family member who I know will enjoy it.

My partner is an author with a mainstream publisher and actually, Kindle offers a lot of opportunity for writers to publish independently and make more $$$.

An indie publisher can take take 75% of the profits from their Kindle sales. If Kindle as a format takes off then it removes the power of the publisher who is suddenly doing less and less (no need to print paper or deal with distribution contracts).

With lower overheads she can afford to sell her books at a lower price point (to your point on reduced e-pricing) and still make more than her traditional sales.

She agonizes over the DRM however, which I think is still hurting this area. She also sells PDF's but the issue then is the lack of distribution as you can't sell PDFs on Amazon obviously. It will get better over time, however - like iTunes went mp3 in the end.

> Also the authors are still getting scammed by the industry and only see a tiny fraction of what the buyer pays. This is not it.

Ok, first I think the idea that we should reject groundbreaking advances because they haven't fixed every problem by themselves is insane. Second, it really is opening the door for authors to get a larger cut. The industry had the authors by the neck because the authors depended on a lot of the value the industry added (publishing, editing, advertising, etc). Many authors still rely on those things, but with digital distribution it is now POSSIBLE, for authors who are willing, to do it (at least mostly) on your own.

One note of caution: Most Amazon books are encoded in the Mobipocket format and can be easily cracked. However, there are some (few) books in another format (AZW) which cannot be cracked yet. It is possible to find out in which format a book is before you buy it.

To be honest though, my concern about bookcases is more about accessibility and DRM than it is about the physical and aesthetic value.

There is something special about physically browsing shelves, but what really worries me is that my collection of books will have no single 'library' containing them in 20 years - whether physical or electronic.

The kindle 3's sans-serif looks nice, too. Somehow higher-res than the serif font.