Anthony Gladman, Editor at Taylor & Francis Books gives us his review of Kindle 3: With the launch of the Kindle 3 and the UK’s own version of Amazon’s Kindle store, it seems we’ve reached a tipping point for ebooks. Of course ebooks have been around for ages, especially in academic publishing, but it’s only now that they look set to expand into the general reading market. Given that, it seemed untenable to work in publishing and not to have experienced this important development first hand, so just a couple of weeks ago I finally caved in and ordered one.

I went for the wifi only version. I think Amazon have got the price just right. Sure, it’s a bit of an investment, but not anything like as much as an iPad. And yes, an iPad does more besides reading, but I don’t really care. I’m buying this to read on. I don’t want other stuff distracting me or tempting me. I just want my books on there. As for the 3G version, an extra fifty quid to be able to download books on the hoof didn’t seem worth it to me.

My first impression of the Kindle 3 was good. It looks appealing and is a pleasure to hold: similar in weight to an iPhone but much more comfortable to hold in a reading position for a long time. The rubberised back helps, making for a comfortable feel in your hand, as does the placement of the page turning buttons - there’s a set on either side of the screen about halfway up.

The qwerty keyboard that sits below the screen feels a bit cheap and clicky-clacky. Not that I’ve used it much beyond searching for titles in the store and making a couple of short annotations. The five-way controller that you use to navigate the home screen and the Kindle store is a little better, but hardly slick.

What really holds your attention is the screen. I think Amazon have done a very good job here. This is just as well because it’s the deal breaker: if it’s not right then no end of other features are going to make up for it. The e-ink looks great. The blacks are rich and consistent and the greys surprisingly nuanced. The contrast doesn’t match print - the lightest the screen gets is a very pale grey - but the lines are crisp and sharp and because it’s not backlit you can read for a long time without straining your eyes. Despite being smaller than an A-format paperback page by roughly 40%, it still feels like a decent size and it's not so small that you find yourself hitting the next page button ridiculously often.

It’s responsive too: turning the page happens very quickly. There’s a quick flash of white text on black as the screen refreshes, which some people have told me they find distracting. Personally I find it no more of a distraction than turning a physical page, and it’s over just as quickly. It’s something we learn not to see after just a little time reading printed books, and I think the same can be said for the Kindle.

Next there’s the battery to consider. I haven’t had my Kindle 3 all that long - just a couple of weeks - so I’ve not yet had to plug it in since its initial charge. I’ve used it almost every day, and done a fair bit of browsing the store and downloading over wifi, as well as reading of course. After all this the battery is sitting somewhere around 60% full. Pretty amazing compared to my iPhone, although of course the Kindle does a lot less than that device. [You might argue that this is one of its strengths.]

Once your Kindle’s all charged up, you need to get something onto it to try out the reading experience. Browsing and searching for books on the Kindle is fine, if a little slow. Frankly you’re better off doing it on Amazon’s website, but if you’re on the road, have a 3G Kindle and really must have that Stieg Larsson book right now, then you can.

Finding a Kindle version of the title you want can be a bit hit and miss at the moment. You can have your Eat Pray Love, but if you want The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto then you’re out of luck. Quite a few recent bestsellers will be available, but it gets increasingly erratic as you delve into the backlist. I can only assume that this will improve over time.

But that’s just Amazon’s Kindle store. You can also put Project Gutenberg books on there, of which there are vast numbers all for free, or you can buy books from elsewhere and convert them into a suitable format - AZW or MOBI.

Once you’ve chosen an ebook it takes just a few seconds to download, after which it will appear on the Kindle’s home screen. Adding other documents just is easy - and free if you do it over wifi - you just email them to your @free.Kindle.com email address. Amazon sets this and another @Kindle.com address up for you when you order the Kindle, both of which are linked to your Amazon account. As long as the document is in a compatible format then it will appear in your home screen a few moments later. I’ve tried sending over Word files and PDFs to my Kindle and it handled both very well.

Most of the time the ebooks are fine. They reflow just as you’d expect if you shift the text size up or down. They do have something of a reputation for being prone to errors, and I have to say this is deserved. Errors show up more because the screens are smaller and there’s less visual clutter to detract from them. In most cases you can forgive the odd one or two and move on, but I’ve seen some shockers.

I’m thinking of one in particular, a backlist fiction title from one of the big trade publishers. It read as if it had been put through OCR into XML and from there straight into the various ebook formats without any checking along the way. The result was very distracting. I lost count of the number of times I saw 1 for I. Even worse, I kept tripping over missing opening quotes which left me confused over what was dialogue and what wasn’t.

We can’t afford to let this happen. Content is paramount. If publishers want to educate readers to pay for ebooks we must live up to our end of the bargain and deliver a professional product.

One clear case where ebooks win out over print is the ability to have a library in your pocket. I won’t dwell on this - we’re all familiar with it from MP3s by now - but it’s worth mentioning briefly because it really is great. It’s worth noting too that you can add your books to collections - which is basically just Amazon-speak for folders. This is useful when the home screen starts to get a bit cluttered.

And it does get cluttered. Free ebooks pile up quickly, as do the samples Amazon lets you download, also for free. Fancy taking a quick peek at the Booker winner? No problem. Why not go for the rest of the short list too? And once you’ve done that, if you’re anything like me you’ll probably end up buying at least a couple of the full versions.

So far so good. You’re away, reading ebooks on the commute or in bed and everything’s fine. But what about when it breaks down? Let me tell you, it’s really not fun. You realise with a sickening lurch that you’ve handed your reading over to a device, and now there’s nothing you can do to access all your books. It’s seldom so absolute when a printed book is damaged, and what’s more it doesn’t take a large chunk of your library with it.

It happened to me after just a few days. I still don’t know quite what went wrong, other than my Kindle failed to digest two Project Gutenberg books I’d downloaded to it. First it froze and wouldn’t let me open any books. Then the screen went totally blank. It was bricked, and I felt utterly powerless. I couldn’t do anything other than turn it off and then on again. Or rather put it to sleep and wake it. You can turn it off, but this information is rather buried away in the documentation both on and offline.

You can reset it too - but to learn this I needed to call the helpline. Thankfully the helpline is good. I got a fast response from them on a Sunday evening (the only worse time for anything electrical to break of course being a bank holiday). After resetting it the Project Gutenberg books appeared. Everything worked again, and has continued to do so since then without any further problems.

But there’s no denying that this will be a problem if we continue to read more on electronic devices, and that print books just don’t suffer from it. The question is, are the benefits worth this risk? If you really want to get into it there’s DRM to think about too. It seems a safe bet that Amazon are hoping most people probably won’t think about it, and will concentrate instead on what’s most convenient for them in the short term.

It’s when it comes to extended reading that the Kindle really shows its strengths. Its light weight and its e-ink screen combine so that the Kindle, like a printed book, falls away. All that’s left is the text. Only in some cases the Kindle does it better. For the last couple of years I’ve avoided reading large hardbacks because I just don’t like the weight of them nor their sharp corners. They’re just not comfortable to hold for long periods. They continually remind me of their physical presence, getting between me and what I want to read.

The Kindle is convenient. Even more so than the paperback, which in turn was invented to be more convenient than a hardback. Just as the paperback didn’t kill the hardback, I’m sure the ebook won’t kill print but it definitely has its part to play.

If anyone reading this has decided they want a Kindle, I strongly recommend reading [this article in Wired on how to do almost everything with a Kindle 3] 

Anthony Gladman is an Editor at Taylor & Francis Books with over ten years' experience publishing in print and online. He tweets on books and publishing (among other things) as @agladman.