USA Today Interviews Jeff Bezos
USA Today have just published an interview of Jeff Bezos where he talks about kindle ebook sells, touch capability issues, ebook formats, market competition etc…..Here is a selected sections of the interview:
On multimedia
Q: Why not add multimedia to e-books?
A: You want to enter the author’s world, the great novel or engaging non-fiction narrative. In the case of a physical book, you’re not noticing the stitching and the glue and the paper and the ink. That all disappears. We’re always trying to make Kindle get out of the way.
On touchscreen
Q: Why didn’t you add a touch-screen?
A: It’d be very easy to add a touch-screen; in fact, Sony has done it. We don’t want to compromise the reading experience. Today’s capacitive touch-screen technology is an extra layer on top of the display surface, and it increases glare.
If it’s a book about music history, having music people can play at certain points in the book can be useful. Maybe biology textbooks can benefit from certain animations. You’re not going to make Hemingway better by adding animations.
On ePub
Q: Why doesn’t Amazon support the popular “e-pub” standard used by your competitors and many libraries?
A: We are innovating so rapidly that having our own standard allows us to incorporate new things at a very rapid rate. For example: Whispersync (which uses wireless connections to sync your place in a book across devices) and changing font sizes.
Other standards over time may incorporate some of these things. But we’re moving very quickly to improve the state of the art. It’s very helpful not to have to wait for some third-party standard to catch up.
On 3G Kindle vs wifi-only Kindle
Q: Who do you think will buy the $139 Wi-Fi-only Kindle as opposed to the pricier model with 3G?
A: Evidence is starting to accumulate that this is a mass-market device. I predict that at the $139 price, people will buy multiple Kindles. We’ll have to wait and see. People might buy Wi-Fi-only models for the kids and 3G ones for themselves.
On Kindle with color screen
Q: How about a Kindle with a color screen?
A: If you could add color without compromising readability, great. But color is not ready for prime time.
An LCD (color) display (such as the one on the iPad) has many compromises: All of a sudden, you can’t read outside; people like to read outside. All of a sudden, you have to worry about your battery. For many people, extended reading sessions on an LCD display cause eyestrain. There’s a whole bunch of reasons you want a display like Kindle.
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