01 March 2009

Kindle is a verb, as in to burn yourself

CNet News has an article by Greg Sandoval about the recent Kindle flap:
Amazon chose to keep secret from much of the publishing sector the text-to-speech feature built into the Kindle 2. Instead, Amazon sprung the feature on publishers and the retailer is now taking public-relations hits that it might have avoided if it hadn't been so tight lipped. Following the debut of the Kindle 2, the 9,000-member Authors Guild claimed text-to-speech created a derivative work and violated copyright. Paul Aiken, the guild's president said many publishers were also angered over the speech function, adding that Amazon never consulted beforehand with either of those groups. Amazon responded Friday by handing publishers the ability to disable the text-to-speech feature on any title they choose.
Amazon's response has disappointed some customers, who are left with the impression that the retailer is unwilling to go to bat for them. This is exactly the kind of public relations blunder that Amazon can ill afford as it attempts to breathe life into the digital-book market. In this endeavor, who can argue that Amazon isn't off to a great start?
The Kindle is a hit. The e-reader has been blessed by the doyenne of publishing herself: Oprah. A Citigroup analyst recently estimated that Amazon sold 500,000 units last year. He also predicted that the Kindle would generate $1.2 billion by 2010. That number didn't include book sales.
Amazon might have avoided the controversy, had the company enlisted the counsel of important constituents in the publishing industry before launch. This way they could have a) learned about the objections quietly; b) done any haggling there and maybe come to a financial arrangement; c) scrapped the whole idea of text-to-speech if there was too much push back.
It's easy to tweak Amazon for failing to see the problem coming. But how are execs handling the controversy now?
"Kindle 2's experimental text-to-speech feature is legal," Amazon said in a press release issued on Friday, announcing the company would give publishers the option of disabling text-to-speech on any title. "No copy is made, no derivative work is created, and no performance is being given." If Amazon believes those things, some will argue (certainly those in the anticopyright crowd) that the company should take a stand, if not for its own sake than on behalf of customers.
Fighting a potentially expensive and prolonged legal battle with suppliers is a lot to ask of Amazon or any other company. Perhaps if text-to-speech were a vital or much-loved feature, then Amazon would be more apt to hold the line. But it's not.
Text-to-speech isn't going to threaten audio books for a long time. That's not my opinion. That's the opinion of Andy Aaron, an IBM expert on text-to-speech and a self described "booster" of the technology. "I don't think at this point, or for the foreseeable future, text-to-speech is going to compete meaningfully with a professional book reader," Aaron said last week. "Am I going to sit down and put my feet up and listen to text-to-speech read War And Peace or Harry Potter for six to eight hours? For someone who has the choice, I think they would rather get an audio book."
For Amazon to be taking heat over this issue is silly. There's not that much in it for the company. Next time, they should take a few more risks with media leaks and get some guidance.
Rico says it'll be so good for blind people; the publishers should shut up and eat it...

3 comments:

DANIELBLOOM said...

NEWS ARTICLE ONLINE TODAY:
"Do you kindle?"


by R.U. Kindling



Since Westerners are sometimes referred to as "people of the book" --
meaning, people of the Torah and and the "Old Testament" and the "Also
Old New Testament" and "The Audacity of Hope" -- it makes sense that
we Western people like reading books, writing books, buying books and
even "kindling" books. Kindling books? Did I just write "kindling"
books?

Yes, there's a new word out there in the blogosphere, online and on
blogs and websites in most of the English-speaking world, and that new
word is a verb -- to kindle, and the ING form kindling -- that has
taken on the meaning of "reading on a Kindle e-reader device from
Amazon.com.

Don't believe me? Google it. That's another corporate name that was
turned into a popular verb. There are others, too: to xerox something,
and to facebook someone. Language is a never-ending story. And for the
people of the book, language is a multilingual affair, and while "to
kindle" has not yet made it into a real dictionary yet, stay tuned.
Words have wings, and Emily Dickinson might have said: "Language is
that thing with feathers."

The Urban Dictionary in California has been studying "kindle" as a
verb, as a takeoff of the corporate name for Amazon's reading device,
and the word -- as a verb -- is catching on, from blog posts on the
New York Times website to online forums at Treehugger.com and
Kunstlercast.com. The way the new verb form was submitted the editors
at Urban Dictionary, which is run by a 20-something man who works at
Google headquarters in Mountain View, California was like this,
according to sources deep within the hidden confines of the evolving
blogoteria:

"Kindle: To read a book or a newspaper on a Kindle e-reading device."

Usage examples:

"I'm kindling now, I will call you back in ten minutes."

"I'm kindling the newspaper now, can't chat, will return call in one hour."

"Do you enjoy kindling with your Kindle?"

"Hey, I've been kindled. My latest book was packaged by Kindle as a
Kindle book and you can read it on Kindle now. It feels kind of good
to be kindled."

"My book was out of print for a long time, but a new publisher
reprinted it and put it on the Kindle book list and you could say my
book has been rekindled. I love it!"

Kindle as a verb is catching on. Judy Goldberg in Delray Beach,
Florida, tells me: "I've owned my Kindle for almost 6 months and love
it. When I mention I'm reading a particular book, I refer to it as
'I'm Kindling such and such a book', so it's already a verb to me.
It's hard to imagine reading a regular book now."

Liz Hill told me: "I don't 'kindle', but I know we certainly all
'google'. And that verb is
in the dictionary. I often 'skype' or tell people to skype me instead
of calling me. So
there's another example. Maybe "kindle" will catch on as a verb, too.
Who knows? Who knew?"

And Whitney Leader-Picone told this reporter: "I thought the point of
the Kindle was the paper screen technology which made reading a book
on a digital device not like a digital device at all. Computer screens
start to hurt my eyes over the course of the day, which is why I have
been so reluctant to consider ebooks in the past. The Kindle, I have
heard, is gentle on the eyes. So wouldn't these differences
differentiate "kindling" from reading online?"

And she added: "I don't really mind "to kindle" since the Kindle is so
unique, but I am still skeptical about whether we need a new word for
reading online. Also, shouldn't we let these new terms grow
organically as they have in the past and as "to kindle" and
"facebooking" have already?"


Not everyone agrees that kindle will make a good verb.

"I think this is the first time I've encountered 'kindle' as a verb,"
one blogger on the Internet said last November in a comment thread,
almost six months ago. "Clever, but it sort of makes my skin crawl."

So do you kindle? Are you kindling now as we speak? Do you own a
Kindle? Will you use kindle as a verb, or does it sort of make your
skin crawl, too?

Stay tuned. As one top computer industry reporter at the New York
Times told me in a recent email about this new use of the word kindle
as a verb to mean "reading a book on a Kindle": "Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm."

Words are those things with wings. See Jane kindle. Watch Dick kindle

DANIELBLOOM said...

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=kindle

now listed on URban Dick dot com

DANIELBLOOM said...

http://zippy1300.blogspot.com/2009/03/wikipedia-accepts-kindle-as-verb-and.html

wiki now too

 

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