4th Edition, Kindle & The Future of Gaming Books

[Drammattex]

It looks neat. I'm with the others who say "wait for the price to drop."

What interests me most is the ability to annotate. I would annotate the **** out of RPG books on that thing, whereas I'm O.C. about my paper versions; when players borrowing my books begin stabbing at them with their pens & pencils, I go nuts. I just can't bring myself to write in my D&D books.

 

[Drammattex]

Another thought:

My 60 gb iPod cost about $300 when it came out (now the 80 gbs are $250).

Is the Kindle cooler than a 80 gb iPod?

I'd have to say no. It's cool, but not that cool (or as useful). So for me, the price of an iPod is a good benchmark as to how the Kindle should consider itself in the marketplace. Kindle has to ask itself if it's cooler and more useful than an iPod and then gauge its price that way.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

Kindle?

Yeah, something has to start the fire to burn the real books with.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Yes, I want to pay more for a non-PDF book that I can't share with my computer.

If they marketed this towards college students who $9.99 would be an awesome bargin compared with the high text book prices, it'd be a block buster seller as one semester would pay for it.

 

[Irda Ranger]

Yo! Price-of-book complainers! Have any of you gone to the Amazon store and actually looked at the prices?

$9.99 is how much the advertised New York Times bestsellers cost (for new hardcovers selling for $25). It goes up or down from there. If you look at "All books" and sort by price you'll see that the cheapest book sells for $0.01

One frickin' cent. For a chemistry textbook.

You can also get following books for the list prices:

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith - $0.99
The Federalist Papers, by Alexander Hamilton - $2.69
Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein - $6.39 (only the most recent version is available for Kindle, which can only be bought new in hard cover for $32.95)
Holy Bible (King James Version), Old & New testament - $0.80


Need I go on?

Not every book is as competetively priced (the most expensive book in the Kindle store it $1,079.96(!!!), but it's incorrect to think they're all $9.99

 

[Atlatl Jones]

I wonder how much they paid Neil Gaiman to film his testamonial. Still, I understand why he would like it. He travels so much for promotions and book tours and the like that it would be cumbersome to bring along a few actual books.

I like physical books far too much to get an electronic replacement. I do like the annotation feature, and if it's possible to cut and paste blocks of text from a book into a word or text file, that would make me more likely still. There are times when I really would like to copy down a passage or quote for future reference, but don't want to copy it out by hand.

I would consider it if, in a few years, I have to start taking trips for work and have lots of things to read along the way. If they ever make a version that can download law cases from westlaw, or that makes it easy to port them over via text or pdf, and enables me to annotate them and print them, that would make it even more tempting.

 

[Moon-Lancer]

Kindle?

Yeah, something has to start the fire to burn the real books with.

yeah, that thought doesn't sit well with me. I'm glad others like yourself have pickup up on the name as well.

 

[Stogoe]

I have to say I'm in love with e-paper. I want me some flexi's, stat!

But as of now it's a bit pricey..

 

[dvvega]

A while back I made a post on these boards regarding how I envisioned the RPG Book market to advance - e-reader style with patches upgrading your PDFs automatically etc.

Looks like Kindle is a step in the right direction for that vision of mine ... right who stole it!

D

 

[BASHMAN]

With my palm pilot I was able to buy a $5 software app called "isilo" from which I can read a great many books: Dune, many conan books, and the 3.5 SRD-- all searchable & easy to read. If you already have a PDA, I don't see the point of Kindle at all-- at least not at $400. I was excited for this product when I heard about it-- then saw it cost more than a brand new next-gen videogame console and lost interest.