Can Amazon and Google Make E-books Work?

Amazon (AMZN) and Google (GOOG) are reportedly going to give electronic books a try. The big question is whether it’ll work.

The New York Times reports that Amazon in October will launch the Kindle, an e-book reader. The Kindle will run $400 to $500 and will connect wirelessly to an Amazon e-book store.

For its part, Google will start charging customers for full online access to digital copies of books. Publishers will set prices and share revenue with Google.

No one from the companies is commenting, but that hasn’t stopped the rest of us from talking.

You can’t mention e-books without thinking about Sony (SNE) and its efforts that have so far failed to make digital books mainstream (see Sony Reader review). Peter Kafka at Silicon Alley Insider notes all the problems–e-books require customers to change behavior and few people read more than one book at a time.

Now perhaps Amazon does take e-books mainstream (I’d bet Amazon has a better chance than Sony). But it’s a stretch. I kinda like books and print is a nice diversion on the train from the laptop, wireless card, smartphone, instant messages, phone calls and other stuff you get every minute of your day.

Can an e-book really be a diversion? I doubt it. But with any luck Amazon will put more thought into its e-book reader. I just hope that Amazon is conducting at least one of the following tests with the Kindle to really ensure it’s a hit.

• Test 1: The beach test. Take the Kindle to the beach on a 95 degree day. How does it take sand? What happens with a little sunblock on it? How’s the screen look in the sun? Does it overheat? Since Amazon is in Seattle–where it’s rainy a lot–I doubt it has thought of this test.
• Test 2: The john test. How’s the Kindle in the bathroom (the one place where print is clearly the best medium)? Does anyone want Wi-Fi in the place where most reading occurs?

Comments

[Tom B]

Test 3: I download content from Project Gutenberg and look at beautifully rendered text, in state of the art fonts on my Wireless iPod Touch, which works well in the john and wifi-enabled beaches, BTW, and it's rugged and only $300 and doesn't look like it was designed by retired DEC engineers.

[Marcus]

I wouldn't compare an e-book reader to an iPod touch. The experience of reading on a regular screen vs one with e-ink is quite different. They call it E-ink because it is easy on the eyes, much like reading on paper.

I am looking to buy an e-ink reader soon. The functionality I am excited about is that I could just read pdfs on it without printing them, saving money and avoiding the hassle of too much printed paper.

I plan to use it at work, to go through pdfs that I otherwise would need to print to browse, as well as at home to read online articles from New York Review, Wired, Fast company.. This is of course given that the screen really is easy on the eyes and that the gadget is lightweight.

Cybook 3, Sony Reader and Amazons Kindle are the e-book readers I am considering.