Review device?

[wide_worlds_joy]

Anyone know who I can talk to so I can get a review Kindle for my site? I do reviews of print copies of metaphysical books (http://davensjournal.com), but if ebooks gain in popularity, some publishers may come up with ebooks of the same stuff. Thus having a review of a reading device might be a good thing to have.

I'd prefer a Kindle since I like what I see, several gig of storage, wireless and self contained. However if you want to suggest another device, I'm for it. But I would need to get one of them for free (please, please, please).

Comments

[elf]

I suspect nobody is giving away review Kindles. Nor any other ebook devices. They're too new, too much of a cutting-edge tech device. Kindles, specifically, with all their marketing hype, don't need to give out review copies--any product with a six-month backorder list doesn't give away freebies.

And it's likely that most of the books you review aren't available in ebook formats at all, so it's not likely you can use that as leverage.

I dislike the idea of a Kindle as a review device, as Kindle books can't be purchased by people with other devices at all. (I dislike Kindles in general; they're part of the amazopoly game. But I'm aware that I'm biased.) Sometime soon, I should start posting descriptions/comparisons of the various readers, and why the aspects of them that I like or dislike.

[wide_worlds_joy]

Good points. Well, I can hope....

[cyprinella]

Actually, the folks at Dear Author got Sonys for free, but they also have a partnership with them, as you can tell from the giant Sony advert on their main page.

[childofatlantis.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm not wild about the Kindle on principle, since proprietary formats are never a good thing. On the other hand I have a deep mistrust of Sony for their own DRM hijinks. I'd be really interested in reviews of readers that aren't a Kindle or a Sony.

[elf]

Sony's DRM psychoses are indeed icky. However, I don't deal with the Sony bookstore; I read LRF files made with Calibre (free, open source software), PDFs I make myself and some from manybooks or feedbooks, and RTF files.

The Sony Reader allows people to avoid contact with Sony and still have lots of ebook options.

But I am aware that Sony's got a lousy customer service record all around, and I probably would have a Bookeen or Cybook if those had been available during the brief window I had for shopping. I do intend to review those as well.

[ladyseishou]

"I dislike the idea of a Kindle as a review device, as Kindle books can't be purchased by people with other devices at all."

Umm, that's not entirely correct. There's an Apple App (called "Kindle") that lets you d/l Kindle books (even free previews) from Amazon to read on the iPhone or iTouch. It doesn't have all the features of the eReader App but it's not bad.

[elf]

I thought you still needed a Kindle to get those books? That you couldn't register your iPhone/iTouch instead of a Kindle, but you could extend your Kindle reg to the iDevices. (I could have misunderstood the DRM details.)

[ladyseishou]

No, just an Amazon account and the "Kindle" app is all you need to read Kindle books. There's a separate dropdown menu item to d/l the book wirelessly to the iDevice on the Kindle book page.

I know when the app was released that a lot of people were surprised that Amazon released the app. I wondered myself that Amazon wasn't worried about any impact it would have on sales of the Kindle but there you go... Maybe Amazon believes that there are two separate customer bases, one that reads exclusively from their iPhones/iTouches and those that like the Kindle (size of scree, etc).

[quivo]

I personally think that people who would read exclusively on the iPhone/Touch and people who would read only on the Kindle are distinct customer bases, and that the overlap will likely push people more toward buying the Kindle since content can live in both places.

That said, considering how locked down the iPhone platform is (e.g. try getting the books off the device without jailbreaking or unlocking), it's really not that huge a gamble. I think Amazon is hedging its hardware bet with a more software-dependent one. I mean, there's already some kind of shopping app they have out for the Blackberry. Who's to say that another Kindle app isn't hot on its heels for BBs? Or for the G1, or the Android platform?

[delibby]

There's something called a jetBook. It's got a non-backlit LCD screen rather than eink, so it's cheaper. Contrast is better, but the screen is smaller. It was Bed Bath and Beyond has it for about $250, Newegg and Fry's Electronics have it for about $199. It was on sale over the weekend for $179. It doesn't read DRM'd anything, but supposedly it shows up as an external drive when it's plugged in so you can just drag and drop files with any OS.

Fry's has display models of the Astak EZ Reader, the jetBook, the Sony 505 and Sony 700 all lined up so you can compare them. That was cool.