Wen | science and technology reunion Wang, the author | a thousand words
Talk about the Kindle today.
Forget about the discussion of bubble noodle covers or petty bourgeoisie, for people who can read, they can read in any form, and those who do not like to read books are also ornaments to give it the amount of storage in the Washington Library of Congress.
For someone who is always willing to read a book with an ink screen, it doesn't make sense to ask him, "Why do you have to buy another device for something that you can see with your phone?"
No matter how many videos there are on the Internet, there are always many people who choose graphics and texts, articles are scattered on mobile phones, and there will always be people who want to read books. Choosing an ink screen device that can hold a large number of books is a natural choice for book readers, and Kindle's emerging competitors in China are already very telling.
In fact, as early as 2013, before Amazon entered China with the Kindle Paperwhite, onyx boox (Opry) had several ink screen e-readers. The iReader of palm reading, the ink case of Xiaomi, the Dangdang reader and the WeChat reading reader all belong to the latecomers.
Even if Amazon does not respond, the credibility of the rumor that Kindle wants to withdraw from the Chinese market is also very low, and now Kindle has a considerable market in China, and many users with foreign language e-book needs are still loyal users of Kindle.
In today's overpopularity of smart phones, the Kindle is sometimes even like a retro device, can not pursue network speed, can not expect high brushing, can not install APP, can not watch video.
There should be a considerable number of people who buy ink screens to help them quit the habit of playing with mobile phones, although in the end it may not be successful. There are also a considerable number of people who buy ink screens because staring at electronic blue screens for a long time will be discarded, although ink screens cannot be completely exempt from this harm.
As a veteran Kindle user, in addition to the original product in 2007 and the Kindle 2 in 2009, I have used many generations of classic products since then. Having experienced the stage of buying and eating ashes, but also having the experience of holding on to it for several months and not giving up, the biggest experience is:
Ink screen more often represents a kind of slow life pursuit in the fragmented information age, and the sense of ritual is more than the actual value, but this sense of ritual is indispensable.
01 Slow down the Internet
Learning does require a sense of ceremony, and the sense of ritual and "dressing" mentioned here are two different things. You can't assume that a student who is preparing to prepare for the exam will move his home out of the downtown area for "pretending", nor can you hastily conclude that the person who has a large bookcase in his home is just for display.
After the popularity of e-book apps such as WeChat Reading, the physical bookstore industry has not gone into recession as imagined. According to the "2020-2021 China Physical Bookstore Industry Report", in 2020, 4061 new bookstores and 1573 bookstores were closed in China, and the number of new openings was 2.6 times that of the number of closures.
Although internet celebrity bookstores such as Sisyphus have developed new profit models such as catering + cultural creation + book sales, the transformation of bookstores does not mean that paper books are no longer popular. Among the bookstores surveyed, 24 books accounted for 100% of the sales revenue, nearly one-third of the bookstore book sales revenue accounted for 50-79%, and the only bookstore that obviously relied on teaching and auxiliary books to make profits was Xinhua Bookstore.
You may be surrounded by the kind of people who insist on reading paper books, buying box after box, and never bothering to move. Compared with Kindle users, this kind of person has a heavier sense of ceremony, which is neither too much trouble nor too expensive.
Kindle is a more portable choice than physical books, and portability is the most fundamental benefit of Kindle, for the eyes to consider are secondary, if only occasionally read so one or two, then with a mobile phone or computer to see how much tired eyes?
People who have long purchased e-paper books on Amazon or ordered the Kindle Unlimited monthly subscription service should know that the price of many e-paper books is not necessarily much cheaper than physical books, and the same price can be used to buy the same second-hand book on an e-commerce platform.
But when it comes to portability, the Kindle is definitely not as good as a mobile phone. It's just that people still choose the less feature-rich Kindle, subconsciously in order to pursue a sense of ritual, a sense of ritual temporarily isolated from the mobile Internet.
Just like reading a book, you have to find a desk, a chair, a quiet room, put down your mobile phone to open the ink screen, in a large sense, it is also creating a small learning space.
People who are immersed in the mobile Internet world, time flies fast, at least subjectively, people feel so, you hold the phone to brush for two hours is almost unconscious. Over time, people inevitably panic and anxiety about time, do nothing, a day passes, this day if you use it to do other meaningful things.
To slow down time, you have to temporarily break away from the mobile Internet.
I have to admit that now because it is too easy to obtain information, it has made people lose some of the original sense of gain, and the surge in entertainment methods has made happiness show a situation of diminishing marginal benefits.
Reading books can also be fast food and entertainment. Just as the so-called learning sea is endless, turning back to the shore, in the matter of reading, the fast pace of the Internet has brought its ability to disassemble information to a new realm, and the video platform can be seen everywhere after reading a book in 10 minutes.
According to the "2021 Douyin Pan-Knowledge Content Data Report", the number of pan-knowledge video playback increased by 74% year-on-year. Douyin is like this, and bilibili, which is known as the learning website, is needless to say.
This kind of video is the same as watching a movie in 5 minutes, targeting people who will not calm down to read books or movies, so there is no need to criticize this phenomenon.
The Internet is too fast, so fast that the elderly are too late to adapt, and the young people have to adapt, not daring to stop for a second to look back and forth. Everyone has a smartphone, but more and more people miss the ritual that was once a slow pace.
Someone once made an app that writes to the future, on the app you can send a letter to the real address or email address, the letter will not be received immediately, and the user can even set the time to five years later. This is a very retro idea, and the app is mainly run by user donations. I thought this kind of app would not have a long lifespan, but after 7 years, I found that it is still there, sending more than 3 million letters and downloading more than 10 million in some app stores.
If sending a letter can make people feel the romance of "once upon a time when the car was very slow, only enough to love one person in a lifetime", it is not unusual for a slow-paced app to be widely popular.
If you change devices and create an environment that is not disturbed by mobile phones to help you read and learn, it should be supported, just remember: kindle leads the door, and the practice is in the individual.
The word Kindle in English originally meant to start burning; Ignition; Aroused (interest, feelings) etc...
02 Product specificity VS versatility
In the era of mobile Internet, it is a luxury to calm down and read books, and it is even more expensive to do business about reading books in the traffic-oriented content world, and only Amazon can afford it.
Kindle has produced a total of eleven generations of products so far, each generation has 1 to 5 products, the first generation is the only product that supports SD cards, from the fourth generation to remove the full-letter physical keyboard, Kindle Paperwhite officially removed all physical keys, Kindle 10 began to have built-in reading lights.
Through continuous evolution, Kindle has successively possessed wifi functions, voice functions, browser functions, etc., and has also realized online reading of WeChat reading web version in the past two years. It can be found that its upgrades have always been maintained on a very specific line, and all improvements are considered from the perspective of easy reading.
But it's also become a place where Kindle is widely criticized, just as Apple's innovation in every generation is always considered to be toothpaste innovation, and Kindle is not bold in innovation.
However, if electronic devices such as kindles that specialize in reading have a lot of functions other than reading overnight, its competitors will have to become smartphones, and it is self-evident which is better or worse.
It is precisely because the Kindle is only a Kindle, not another, that it has survived to this day.
From another point of view, this kind of specificity is actually something that many domestic Internet product designs lack, whether it is hardware or software, manufacturers generally pursue large and inclusive, lazy to ponder and improve in details. They tend to work on some of the marketing and selling points.
One family out of the curved screen, then everyone followed the curved screen, one family has four rear cameras, the next flagship machine out of six rear cameras.
Software is the same, from payment, social to content, e-commerce, as long as other apps have the function, it must also have, we will also be this complex and bloated design as a "service".
It is not easy to do a good job of smart phones, and camera and shape design should not be the focus.
Similarly, the first thing to think about when doing ink screen devices is not how to increase network speed or increase social software. Among the many Kindle competitors, some are companies with the potential to surpass the Kindle, as long as they persist and specialize.
The technical content of the ink screen is not high, and there are very obvious shortcomings, such as simple tone and slow response, who can overcome these problems has actually won half (the other half is the amount of storage).
In the past two years, Palm Reading, iFLYTEK and Wenshi have launched their own color screen products, according to some user feedback, the use of these color screen experience can not be compared with the black and white screen, but the resolution is still stuck at 100ppi, and the black and white ink screen has long been 300ppi.
Compared with the technical problems of color screens, I am more worried that the functions of ink screens will become more and more diversified after the realization of color screens, which also violates the original intention of the birth of such products to distinguish them from mobile phones.
Some time ago, the electric paper reader launched by WeChat Reading was an example. In 2019, the number of registered users of WeChat Reading has exceeded 200 million, accounting for more than 80% of users in extra-large and first-tier cities, and nearly 80% of users with bachelor's degree or above.
The rise of WeChat reading process belongs to the typical big tree under the good shade, its competitors such as NetEase snails, libraries and palm reading, etc. have no way to gather a large number of active users in a short period of time like WeChat reading, under the blessing of the social chain, WeChat reading users are also more enthusiastic about comment exchange and sharing.
Therefore, in the context of this birth, WeChat Reading also has to launch its own reader, which is really a bit confusing. To know that it is not easy to achieve socialization on the ink screen, even if one day in the future really achieves smooth socialization, then WeChat reading can still be called a pure reading software?
The launch of the WeChat reading reader is more likely to be out of the consideration of occupying the market, after sitting on a huge number of users, it has no way to watch a variety of electric paper books mushroom, but it does not have any action.
However, one thing is certain, Amazon has been in a state of loss every year for so many years, and other e-paper books that lack deep users are facing no less difficulties than Amazon, and the possibility of making a profit by e-reading in a short period of time is minimal.
In particular, this is not the best stage for e-reading, and even the debate over paid models and free models is not over.
The cost of pulling new products is rising, and for electronic products like the Kindle, which are not just needed, it is important to be specific, because in terms of diversity, they are definitely not comparable to smartphones.
The development time of mobile Internet is still very short, especially the domestic Internet giant has just passed the stage of rapids, there is a heart of enthusiasm that wants to try everything, and the electric paper book is likely to be one of the cannon fodder on their way to profit.
03 A thankless choice
Instead of treating the ink screen industry as a hardware industry, it is better to regard it as a content industry.
We only need to think a little about the following mainstream business model in the content industry to know what the new e-paper books are most likely to be destroyed.
Whether it is a long video platform that is deeply rooted in film and television, or a short and medium-length video platform that focuses on UGC+PUGC, advertising is always the main pillar, followed by membership payment, e-commerce and other businesses.
Under the premise of ensuring the reading experience, the advertising space that the e-paper book can provide is very small, and most e-paper books such as the dangdang reader as long as the advertising space is an open-screen advertisement (this push can be manually turned off).
Obviously, content payment is the right way to make money for e-paper books, and Kindle's main source of revenue is also e-book orders and monthly subscription services.
Referring to the payment rate of video platforms and music platforms, the cost of text piracy is much lower than that of video piracy, and the payment rate of e-book platforms will only be lower.
When the number of books on the platform is insufficient, it will hit the user's enthusiasm for payment. This is also why no matter how emotional NetEase Cloud is, there will still be users who will turn to Tencent Music because of copyright issues.
From the perspective of making money, e-paper books are really a thankless project, not to mention that most companies can't slow down at all.
Too much pursuit of fast sometimes will only make people live more and more back, the amount of information that ordinary people can receive and digest in their lifetime is limited, and to meet the infinite network world with limited capacity will only increase consumption. As early as Zhuangzi, there was a similar feeling: My life also has an end, and knowledge has no end. With no end, there is no end, and it is gone.
There is so much content on the Internet that users don't need that much content. As long as we stop and look back carefully, we will find that many things that are happening now have also been staged, and even many of the hot search paragraphs were popular ten years ago.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, 27.7 billion newspapers, 2 billion periodicals and 10.1 billion books will be published in 2020. Paper books alone are in the tens of billions, and online books are even more difficult to count.
No matter how much content is produced online and offline, only a small part of it can be seen and known. We spend a lot of time discerning what is good or bad, what is true and what is false.
Electronics like the Kindle, ostensibly opening up a world for the reader, are actually closing off some of the worlds so that there is less interference from the Internet.
Let's take it as a shallow literary pursuit, and ridicule is not necessary.