Tens of thousands of titles

Included are almost all the bestsellers for $9.99 each. Wonder how much the rest will cost. If you could select one title for the Kindle, what would it be?

the Second World War series, by Churchill. I know that's actually 6 titles, but they're massive, and I'd love to have them all in one handy light-weight reader. Do you think eventually when you shop for books, you'll be able to click a "buy it for Kindle" link, or will Kindle ebooks always have to be bought from the Kindle bookstore? It would be cool if I could go down my wishlist and select the books that are available for Kindle.

ETA because I didn't notice the touchstone was wrong.

I did read that a Kindle account will be linked to your Amazon buying history and recommendations. I've got a huge one in mind too: Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It's my ambition to read that before my decline starts!

War and Peace in the new Pevear translation. I am currently waiting for the paperback, so it will come down in price and weight.

Last night I played around with the Kindle Books store, seeing what they had and didn't have. Since I already knew they had the Gathering Storm, I went to the regular book search and used that title. When it came up as a regular book, I looked underneath it at the "other editions" and it said: Kindle edition, Audio, Hardback, etc, so I guess that answers my question. Nifty!

I see this as one of the biggest problems with the Kindle. iTunes doesn't have everything—there are some important gaps. But it has orders more than any physical CD store.

That's just not so with the kindle. The gaps are really serious and you don't have this amazing "long tail" depth. Books are MORE of a long-tail play than music anyway. LibraryThing has nearly three million titles and still a signifiant percentage of books entered are singletons.

I'm not sure this is going to change any time soon. I'm not sure how it works with music—although labels are much less numerous and have more power than publishers—but book contracts are always this-and-no-more. A publisher can't decide to issue a book on Kindle without getting another agreement from the author. They may start writing contracts with that in mine down the road, but it's not the case for what's already been published. So, while Amazon may succeed in getting deals with all the major publishers, getting older stufff in is going to be hard. It's going to be a long time before the Kindle has a stock to rival a medium-sized public library, or even (if coverage is considered) a mall Borders or B&N.

You are right, Tim -- I didn't find any of the books I am hot for at the moment.

I am seeing excellent applications for the business traveler who reads best-sellers s/he picks up in airports, for libraries in a slow-growing way over time (Rochester already rents ebooks with some rental books -- imagine the savings in space and overhead in the long, long run) and especially for students -- where it would be a godsend if they make it work for that market.

For the ordinary LT reader, not so much.

I wonder about the standard argument, that it's good for business travellers who don't want to lug heavy books.

How big a deal is that? Who's really affected? Books aren't that heavy, are they? In theory, it would be good for people who really DO want to read the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire on the plane, but is that common? What percentage of books are really consumed on plane flights anyway? I think there's this consistent need for technology companies to forget what reading really looks like, and who does it. I'll bet you more books are consumed by 40-to-45 year-old American women during their lunch break than all the hot-shot business travellers in the world.

And it seems to me that portability and low cost are equally important for this new demographic. I can't tell you how many times I've had to stuff a book in my poket or bag quickly because my plane was boarding, or left a book in the back of a seat or at a hotel.

I wonder if TSA has this item on their list yet? Will they have to check what's in the library :-) Now that could really hold things up!

I'm a brand-new Library Thing user. Your group's name caught my eye as I am also interested in whether the Kindle will be the e-book vehicle that finally catches on. I travel for pleasure fairly often and tend to drag way too many books along. The convenience would be important to me although the price is in the "wait a while" category. Another problem might be that I won't be able to get many of the non-best seller type books I prefer so I might end up dragging books anyway. But 200+ titles, more with memory cards...how tempting!

Welcome to LT. We can be a lively bunch, hope you enjoy all the features. I spend way too much time reading all the discussions so I guess I recommend that. (-;

Meanwhile the Green Dragon group is having an conversation that's gone to 84 messages. I wonder what sort of differences would emerge between genre-groups.

I've never been a fan of audiobooks. For those of you who are, how do they stack up against e-books for price and diversity?

I started listening to audiobooks because I needed something to do with my mind while my hands were busy with other tasks, also to make the time go faster while I was commuting. I became hooked because the pleasure of a good performance by a reader (for example, anything narrated by George Guidall or Barbara Rosenblatt) adds a great deal to my enjoyment of certain types of books. It must be similar to listening to a good storyteller. I would not use e-books and audiobooks the same way because one type requires the use of my eyes while the other does not. I avoid listening to anything that would require frequent references to maps, illustrations, etc. A drawback of audiobooks until MP3 players and iPods came along was their price, which can range from equivalent to the hard-cover book to multiples of that price. I am waiting for the format wars to result in fewer choices before I go the MP3/iPod route as there doesn't seem to be a perfect player right now. I get many audiobooks on CD or cassette (gasp!--no early adopter am I) from our local libraries. The library collections are growing because of increasing demand so that is much more practical than when I first got hooked on them. A friend downloads a book a month from Amazon to her iPod and loves the convenience but she doesn't have room for more than a few titles.

I probably haven't given audiobooks a fair trial, but when I have listened to one (from cassette Lolita to iPod I feel bad about my neck ) I have been too easily distracted. When reading a "book book" I have only to turn my attention back to my place on the page without pushing any (physical) buttons. Not sure where the Kindle would fit in.

Kindle will fit in like reading, hindsdaledog. I cannot concentrate on auditory information very well, so I must see it on a page, and backtrack if I wander. Kindle could work; tapes, alas, do not.

So here's my question about depth of titles.

Apparently, for free (or for a fee if they transmit wirelessly), Amazon will "kindlize" any documents you send.

Now, I have 3 DVD's here with over 13,000 books from project Gutenberg, etc, in text format. You can buy these at www.samizdat.com

So...if I send Amazon Wuthering Heights, I'm assuming they'll send it to me, ready to go.

Do I have that right? That would definitely help things.

Note: My folks just told me that they ordered one, so sometime between now and Xmas I'll be able to test my theory. I will, of course, post the results here and in the Green Dragon...

I was just thinking I hope we can soon "ask the person who owns one"! Last time I checked the website they were guaranteeing delivery before Christmas (I think Dec. 17).

Thanks, Kambrogi. It sounds like the page-turning is virtually effortless.

Atomicmutant: that sounds fantastic! Why not write them and ask?

#19, on the forums at Amazon, people have been getting different answers to their questions. So I'll wait until I can try it myself!

I hope the thing arrives early, as my folks are going south to Phoenix on the 26th! I may not have much time to play with it before they're gone for 4 months!

Wow, congrats AM, thanks for taking it for a test drive for us!

Back to the first question, which book do I add first?

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, natch! If I ever do get one (not at $400!) I will definitely have the cover embossed with DON'T PANIC in large friendly letters.

Hmmm, if they came out with an embossed The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy special edition, preloaded with the complet works of Douglas Adams, I'd seriously consider it!

Interesting marketing concept ... being able to choose a preloaded series and then choose the name to emboss on the cover ... I'd go with all of Faulkner, and have Yoknapatawpha County Line on the cover (also an imaginary universe). Think of how hot the Harry Potter Series Kindle would be!