Sensible City’s Weblog

Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com, introduces the Kindle at a news conference in New York.

[Ian Bryan]

If you aren’t sold on the Kindle 2, it is probably because you are listening to this guy (pictured above), or to Amazon’s standard marketing. Jeff is a good guy, as charming and brilliant as they come, but he too often speaks indiscriminately to features on his promotional tour (instead of judging his audience for what features and benefits to sell). I watched a full interview with him on the Daily Show and at the close of it, had no interest in purchasing the device.

Smaller than the teensiest of trashy romance novels, but holds around 1,500 titles.

Less than a week later, while on a flight from Boston to Charlotte, word of mouth marketing kicked in. The man sitting next to me was shifting between the NYT, Boston Globe and USA Today, using the search feature to look up his company keywords. Meanwhile, I had been fumbling among the 3 books in my laptop bag, noting that they were stretching its seams.

So I started a conversation and quickly learned that he was in PR (as are we).

“I can search the entire Sunday Edition of the New York Times, Boston Globe and USA Today in the space of 3 minutes,” he stated enthusiastically. “I can do that on-line, but I get bombarded by ads and distractions. Plus, we’re 20 thousand feet up and it took me just 2 minutes to download all 3 pubs onto my Kindle as I stood in line to board the plane.”

3 days later, I received mine (Amazon Prime member, so I got free 2-day shipping). Actually, it belongs to Sensible City (Note: cost of doing business technology = tax deductible). My first action: to test the download speed. I purchased Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, Outliers, for $9.99 (note, its not in paperback yet, so it would have been $23 bucks otherwise). The time it took to download? Somewhere between 5 and 15 seconds – the entire book. I think I actually made some kind of squawking sound. And as soon as I began to use the Kindle (bookmarking content – delighting in the ability to look up any word in any media instantly via the incorporated dictionary – making notes on any subject – etc), it became clear to me that this technology, although in need of improvement, is to me potentially the iPod of the educational technology market.

Why do I say this? Sensible City works in Educational Technology in a variety of ways, most notably with our 4 year anchor client, Promethean, Inc (quick note to teachers – if you haven’t downloaded ActivInspire, you’re missing out!). At NECC (National Educational Computing Conference) in Philadelphia in 2005, I shared drinks with representatives of several of the world’s top educational publishers. All them them relayed that they were working fast to integrate changes in technology with their business models to keep themselves competitive and profitable. At the time, I didn’t see a future without textbooks. The closest I could get my brain to that concept was actually a hot topic at the time: on-demand content publishing with every district becoming its own educational publisher.

But that was all too complicated. Lets go back to the Kindle 2. Check it out – I don’t wish to market it, so you’ll have to do your own research, but in essence, I predict that we are less than 10 years away from all university textbooks being available in a Kindle 2-style format. Amazon should invest intense energy in this area. After spending close to $20,000.00 on textbooks alone during my 7-year college career, its plain and simple. Buy a ton of overpriced books that are outdated the moment they reach the shelves, or spend a little less on a single device that is loaded with an entire semester of coursework.

For all of you page-turning purists, note that my field of study in college was creative writing and I LOVE books. The Kindle doesn’t eliminate the page. I wouldn’t want to sit by the fire with a Kindle and that is why I think Amazon should look at the educational bonfire that is blazing (and unexploited) before them.

While our focus is on K12, I think that market will take a lot more time. So I’ll put it out to you kids in college. Honestly, how much to you enjoy lugging around those $200 books that you only cover 1/4th of for each class? Does it really make since to run up a chiropractic bill just to prop up the dying age of educational publishing?