News & Contests

In case you haven’t heard already (I heard it here), Amazon has unveiled a few new Kindles today, and they hit that all-important price point: under $99. And not just a little under: with special offers, there’s a $79 model.

Sort of. DO NOT BE DECEIVED by the “SPECIAL OFFERS.” They make it sound like it’s something you want. It’s advertising delivered to your Kindle. Your book is now a billboard. (Although they say they won’t interrupt the reading experience, and they’d better not.) You can decide if that’s something you want, but it’s definitely not something I want.

Probably the most important technological innovations to me are the Kindle Touch—a touch screen eReader—and the $200 (no special offers, I think) Kindle Fire. It’s a tablet (the color one in the slideshow). Yep, a tablet. Are we approaching the dream eReader that I was searching for last summer?

I was planning to hold out until my “ideal e-reader” became a reality. (In short, it would be a cross between a Kindle and an iPad, with a touchscreen that could be LCD or e-Ink as needed. Don’t look at me that way—I’m not a hardware person! I don’t know/care if that’s impossible!)

Oooor not. While it’s a heck of a lot less than most of its competition, this is still a regular old LCD tablet (though I’ve discovered I’m not alone in the wish for a screen that would switch between eInk and LCD. Still not a hardware person, but just thinking about it doesn’t sound feasible, unless the eInk screen were on top of the LCD screen and could be switched off, but I think that could lead to a lot of problems….).

I actually have last year’s Kindle (now the Kindle Keyboard without Special Offers—affiliate link, I get a small % of any purchase made through that link—amazingly, it’s still $139. Hm.) And if I had to do it again right now, I think I might actually go for the same thing.

Your mileage may definitely vary, but I LOVE physical keyboards—on smartphones (would that my phone were smart), on computers, and I assume on eReaders. I hate typing on touchscreen keyboards (again, YMMV, but I never have success with them and I’ve been touch typing for 15 years. Also, that’s from my experience with the iPad1, so I guess this could be different.). Oh, and advertising to me on my own personal device for possibly the rest of my life costs >$40. Sorry. I’m not that cheap. However, I do kind of like the idea of subsidizing a lifetime of reading to make it affordable for some people.

And Amazon’s new baseline model: a non-touch, keyboard-free Kindle, the smallest size ever, for $79 (it’s the silver one with one square button and four circular ones at the bottom in the pictures above). I’m guessing you’ll have to input text using the 5-way arrow button. Fuuuun. But good if you’re not a note taker (I really, really am one—especially when reading my own manuscripts).

What do you think? Do you have an e-Reader? Will you be buying a new one?