Read here. Donna is in the process of writing a book on the IPCC's "climate bible," which is going to be a fascinating read. In her article, she writes about the Kindle and what it means to the public and authors like herself:
"A few days ago Amazon.com issued a stunning press release. E-books formatted for the Kindle, Amazon’s wildly popular e-book reader, are now outselling ordinary books...Amazon has apparently sold three times as many e-books in the early months of 2011 as it did during the same period last year...What does this have to do with the climate debate? It means that anyone writing about these topics is missing out on a significant segment of the market – perhaps the largest segment – if their book isn’t available in the Kindle format."
Now, I recently purchased the Kindle and just finished reading the "The Climate Caper," and am now plowing through to finish "The Climate Fix." Plus, I read the thriller "One Second After" on the Kindle during spare time.
Based on my experience so far, I'll probably continue to read my fiction for pleasure via physical books, unless I'm going on a trip where lugging the Kindle around is a heck of a lot better than carrying a large page-turner. For non-fiction books I read for pleasure, I'll probably still opt for the physical variety. Although the Kindle is very readable under almost all light conditions, I still prefer real books - not sure why, but it may have to do with continuous reading of a computer/phone screen a good portion of the day that drives me to needing non-digital, paper reading at end of the day.
In contrast, for all future climate books and other non-fiction books I'm reading for specific knowledge and information, I will only read them using the Kindle format from now on. Why?
- First, one can highlight sentences, paragraphs and sections of the Kindle book and easily go back and review them.
- Second, when you highlight the Kindle automatically "clips" (with a major unexpected exception - more on that later) the highlighted text to a digital file on the Kindle. When the Kindle is subsequently hooked to a PC via USB, one can download the the clip file and then paste the clipped contents into a Word document or Notebook text file or Wordpad file or even a blog's post - nice!
- Third, when one purchases a book for a Kindle, a digital version can also be downloaded to a PC, at no extra charge, using the Kindle for Windows app (I believe there is an app for Mac also). This comes in handy if you're in the mood to read the book on a really large screen during the day, while also doing some work, of course.
Now, for that major unexpected exception. Amazon, unbeknownst to the new Kindle owner, applies an apparent 10% limit rule to the clipping file. Using a simple example, if one were to highlight the entire book, only 10% (the first 10%) will show up in the clipping file - that's a major bummer.
In my case, and I'm sure for many others, I chose the Kindle over alternate ebook readers because of the clipping capability. Unfortunately, Amazon is not upfront with the buyer about this 10% clipping policy, but if one googles the "kindle +clipping +limit" there are some Amazon pages with information on the limit. And there are already some hacks to get around the problem, which will likely improve over time. (Note: the above "google" will get you to the how-to-hack links.)
How did this clipping limit impact me? Well, I bought both The Climate Caper and The Climate Fix with the idea that I would eventually do a 'C3' review on certain sections/passages of each book that I found of value - meaning, I would paste some of "clipped" book content, into the blog, not actually hand type it the old fashioned way.
So, I was reading both books concurrently, liberally highlighting multiple passages from each. Towards the end of the "Caper" I decided to check the Kindle clipping file and discovered that I had reached some mysterious "clipping limit" for both books. That's when I started googling and discovered the hidden Amazon policy. Not good, and definitely not user (buyer) digital friendly. More on that in a second....
Personally, my advice to climate book writers is the same as Donna's, get it to a Kindle format as soon as possible. It's the future and Amazon has already proven that the majority of readership is already there.
In addition, the good news is that it does seem Amazon allows the authors/publishers to remove the 10% clipping policy on a Kindle book. If the author's intent is to have her/his work to be of a major influence, spread far and wide by readers, then either removing the 10% policy, or at least increasing it to something like 70%, would facilitate that. In actuality, the social networkers and bloggers will increase the purchases of your Kindle book if they are allowed to easily share your thoughts, opinions, policy ideas and convictions with others, digitally, without having to frigging re-type your book's content....just a thought.
One final note for clarification: When the Kindle reaches the 10% clipping policy for a given book, via the highlighting mechanism, the highlighting will continue to work for the book and one can continue to review all the past and future book highlights on the Kindle. When the 10% max is reached for a given book though, no new highlighted passages will be stored in the separate clipping file, which is the Kindle file that can be downloaded to a PC.