I have been talking to Steve Krivit about uploading his book to Kindle. I have not actually used a Kindle, but looking over the standards and limitations of the gadget, my hunch is that his book might be more suitable for the Kindle than mine.
I think these electronic reader gadgets are the wave of the future. But the format of the first-generation devices is too limited for technical books. The screen is too small. It is unclear how many Kindles have been sold, or how many are actually in use. I imagine there are a number of them sitting around unused in drawers. Amazon.com is a closed-mouthed company. It may be that the audience is small and only a handful of books will sell. One source estimated that they sold 240,000 Kindles as of August 2008: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/01/we-know-how-many-kindles-amazon-has-sold-240000/ That's not a big audience, since only a handful of those people is likely to go searching for information on cold fusion. Steve's book is already available at Amazon, making it visible to a larger audience, so adding a Kindle edition might bring in more readers than having only a Kindle edition. I have Steve beat on price! It turns out the book costs only $0.80. That's close enough to zero that it will not prevent anyone from downloading it. - Jed
