KINDLE MY FIRE

My Hub wrote this, as you will be able to tell  I am sure? The eBook phenomenon has been talked about for years now, but, for many
of us, it's been a mirage; a utopia of literary loveliness just out of
reach. It's truly amazing to see how reading almost anything you want
from a screen has changed the face of publishing. When I first visited
the London Book Fair a few years ago, publishers were almost in denial,
relegating the spectre of electronic publishing to the so-called
digital zone and a pre-conference. The most recent Fair was full of the
best-selling buzz of blockbuster EBooks, self-published or otherwise,
and the elephant in the room continued to be Amazon.

Love it or hate it, Amazon dominates the EBook market in the UK. You
could say it's a monopoly, enjoying the privileged position of 90% of
the sales of EBooks. You could also say it has got it right, delivering
what people want when they want it in a no fuss manner. I still find it
amazing that you can order a book and be reading it in seconds.

Why do I love my Kindle? I can't see it and it frustrates the hell out
of me. I can't buy a book on it, browse what's available, move around
in the book, or any of the other normal stuff many of you do when you
read. Placing a book mark or note...I don't think so. Reading a novel
on it for me is like having the book on some horrible scroll, no
chapters, pages etc, because those things don't speak. Worse than that,
the keyboard version of the Kindle has not been available for some time,
so if you want something that talks, think again or think IBooks... That
is until yesterday.

I am usually moved to tears of frustration by applications for my
iPhone. The application partly sponsored by York City Council which is
designed to tell us about bus journeys was one such instance - it is
truly outrageous that funding can be used to create something so
inaccessible to blind people and I have not held back in saying so.
However, the updated Kindle App created an altogether different
emotional reaction as it is a game changer when it comes to accessing
EBooks and more.

For the first time, I can access most of the 1.6 million books on Amazon
on my iPhone or indeed other I-device, using speech or my braille
display. I can move around by anything right down to the word and
character. I can access x-ray which seems to get you right in to the
heart of definitions and more. I think I can comment on what I have
read. Put simply, I can read like everyone else.

A few years back, I had to read what the so-called book selection
committee used to select for transcription in to formats such as
braille, audio, etc. It should be called the book de-selection
committee, as only 5% of books ever made it in to a format I could read.
When I started to use EBooks, I had to learn how to browse rather than
just picking the only book available to me in the genre of my choice. I
was like a kid in a sweet shop, grabbing and reading everything; I still
am a bit like that. The new Kindle App is going to give me a really
lovely problem - I can now read even more of what you all read.

There is a statistic which suggests that less than 50% of EBooks are
read to the very end. This is quite reliable as it comes from
developers who know more about us than we would probably like them to
know. I find this astonishing as I read every book I buy, even those I
do not like that much. Maybe this is because I have not had the choice
of reading what I want until now, so I treat the book with greater
reverence, almost a thankfulness that it is available to me, rather than
a throw-away commodity as it is for so many people.

I am disappointed to see some organisations already watering down what
is a huge step forward. Yes, some things could work better, but, for
now, let's celebrate the joy of being able to read and the fact that the
biggest EBook retailer in town has done more than most to bring about
improved access for all of us. There's surely more to come. As a
Vice-President of Amazon indicated, they are likely to bring these
developments to other platforms - that certainly could light my Fire...



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