I’m all for e-ink books. I hate reading on a computer screen, but e-ink is awesome, and just as easy on the eyes as paper. I’m also totally into the idea of a book-sized device that’ll have access to my whole lib and can offer me discounts on new books as a result of the lower distribution costs. But, there is no way in hell I’m going to buy a Kindle. In fact, I wouldn’t even use one if you offered it to me for free.

Why? Simple. I have books in my library that are over a century old. They may be beat to shit, with cracked deteriorating bindings, but they’re still totally usable. But, you are guaranteed to be screwed sooner or later with any DRM encrypted e-book device.  Your device could break, and then you can’t read anything you bought on it until you buy another one. The manufacturer could stop supporting it (and then it’ll break). The manufacturer could switch to a different DRM for future sales, abandoning your old device, or charging you to convert each item you already bought (*cough*itunes*cough*). The manufacturer could cripple your device either intentionally or accidentally, thus making all your purchases evaporate(*cough*microsoft*cough*).

I want any book I buy today to be readable in 20 years, or more. This isn’t an unreasonable request when you’re talking about books. I reread twenty year old books regularly. I’d do it even more if the older half of my library was at my house. Right now, any book you buy on the Kindle is almost guaranteed to be lost money. You’ll be able to read it for a while, and enjoy it, but sooner or later, you’re not going to be able to access it any more, and when that time comes you’ll have to buy it all over again… assuming it’s still available anywhere.

Now, if Amazon, and their competitors, would remove the DRM from their e-book devices, and thus allow me to back up my data, so that when some new, better, device comes out (possibly from another manufacturer) I could read it on that I’d have no qualms about buying one. Well, none except the price. The majority of the books I buy are mass-market paperback which cost about $7.00. If I’m lucky I can get a $2.00 discount by buying the kindle version. At $360 I would have to buy 180 books to even break even. And, while I do buy a lot of books, if I bought two books a week it’d still be less than 2/3 of the way there after a year. How many of you can say you buy at least two books a week? I probably do, on average, but I have a feeling that I’m the exception here. And even then I’m actually worse off than if I’d just bought the paper ones. I’d still be in the hole for money. I wouldn’t feel comfortable walking down the street reading on an e-book reader because if I dropped it I’d be screwed. And yes, reading whilst walking is a major issue for me. I get about 30 minutes worth of reading done every day on my way too and from work. And, I wouldn’t be able to lend any of the books I bought to anyone. I’ve been turned on to so many good authors by books lent to me, and I know my lending out books has turned others on to new authors too.

Until you can provide me with an affordable device that isn’t guaranteed to prevent me from being able to read the books I’ve bought for it twenty years later I’m not going anywhere near it. And twenty isn’t an upper bound. I want to be able to pass those books on to my kids.

[Update] Binil has made a good point in the comments that I felt worth summarizing up here. Tech books get significantly more of a discount than $2 and, more importantly, they will become obsolete long before you kindle stops working, and you’ll not want to repurchase them afterwards to reread in 20 years. I’ve got a stack of useless computer books in my house that I’ll never even open again, nevermind read. If you you limit your purchases to computer books that are going to obsolete themselves the kindle will amortize itself much faster and the DRM becomes a non-issue because you simply don’t care if you loose access to the book in a couple years. The trick is to not let the ease and instant gratification aspect of purchasing on it sway you into buying books to read for pleasure.

[Update 2] From the Kindle’s Terms of Service:

Your rights under this Agreement will automatically terminate without notice from Amazon if you fail to comply with any term of this Agreement. In case of such termination, you must cease all use of the Software and Amazon may immediately revoke your access to the Service or to Digital Content without notice to you and without refund of any fees…

Which can be roughly translated as “If you do something we don’t agree with we can stop you from using any of the books you paid us for. ” You may, or may not, own the digital bits, but you apparently don’t own the right to decode them into something readable.

[Update 3] from John Paczkowski:

Rather than argue with the Authors Guild over the text-to-speech feature of its new Kindle 2 e-book reader, Amazon is modifying the device’s software to make it optional. Authors and publishers will now be able to decide if they want the function enabled or not on titles for which they own the rights.

So again, the fact that the content is DRM’d means that they can disable any features on the books you buy without notice, even if you paid for a Kindle specifically for those features.

Photo CC Licensed from pt.