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Kindle: Reasons for Not Falling in Love

August 15, 2010 •

As a new owner of a Kin­dle DX, I was really hop­ing to fall in love. But it did­n’t hap­pen. Here’s why. [Read more…]

Where Are the Books in French for Kindle?

August 9, 2010 •

A fran­cophile friend is eagerly try­ing to buy French books and peri­od­i­cals for her new Kin­dle DX. She splits her time between Seat­tle and France, and would love to con­sol­i­date her read­ing mate­ri­als elec­tron­i­cally for prac­ti­cal rea­sons. Fueled by opti­mism, she bought a third gen­er­a­tion Kin­dle last Fri­day.

She loves Kindle’s promise, but dis­en­chant­ment is already set­ting in… For rea­sons that aren’t clear, the usage sce­nario she has in mind is not well sup­ported by the cur­rent mar­ket envi­ron­ment. She has spent hours search­ing www​.ama​zon​.fr, to no avail. No French books to speak of, and hardly any peri­od­i­cals.

Her trial sub­scrip­tion to Le Monde has revealed a num­ber of usabil­ity issues. There’s no teaser for­mat that enables her to skip to the arti­cles that most inter­est her. No images, text only.

Update: March 14, 2012 — Ama­zon has launched the French Kin­dle Store (at last!), and now offers over 4000 French clas­sics at no charge. You can visit Ama­zon for more infor­ma­tion on what’s avail­able for French speak­ers. It will be inter­est­ing to see how long it takes the French pub­lish­ing indus­try to agree to release cur­rent titles for enjoy­ment on a Kin­dle…

And now, back to my friend’s wish list — for the expe­ri­ence she wants on a Kin­dle…

En Français, S’il Vous Plait

Her dream: read French nov­els, news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines on a con­ve­niently portable device like the Kin­dle. Cur­rent releases, not just 19th cen­tury pub­lic domain books. Because she’s pas­sion­ate about per­fect­ing her French com­pre­hen­sion and pro­nun­ci­a­tion skills, she’d love to read while lis­ten­ing to a simul­ta­ne­ous play­back via MP3 (or equiv­a­lent).

French is not her native lan­guage, so she wants to be able to select unfa­mil­iar words on the Kin­dle, thereby launch­ing a built-in dic­tio­nary whose entries explain their mean­ing. She’d also wel­come the option of view­ing French-to-Eng­lish trans­la­tions of unknown words and slang (a must-have for peo­ple whose French is less flu­ent than hers.)

She’s very inter­ested in Kindle’s text-to-speech option, espe­cially if it doesn’t sound like a robot. Need­less to say, she expects the text-to-speech option for French con­tent to pro­duce words pro­nounced cor­rectly in French, rather than lis­ten to a techno-voice try­ing to pro­nounce French words as if they had been writ­ten in Eng­lish.

Before order­ing the Kin­dle, my friend did some research which revealed that Ama­zon had released a dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing plat­form for French lan­guage authors in Jan­u­ary. That sparked her pur­chase of a Kin­dle. Surely, she thought, there’d be French ebooks in the mar­ket­place by now, 6+ months since Ama­zon released its multi-lan­guage pub­lish­ing plat­form.

Hélas! She’s learned there are few con­tem­po­rary books in French for Kin­dle. And no linked dic­tio­nary for French con­tent as there is for Eng­lish lan­guage con­tent.

Too Early, Or Too Unusual?

Her big ques­tion: is she just suf­fer­ing early adopter pains, and if she waits patiently, will some­day have the oppor­tu­nity to read French books and mag­a­zines on a Kin­dle? Or is she an out­lier, a mem­ber of a niche mar­ket of French read­ers who would wel­come elec­tronic books, but who are too few in num­ber to moti­vate the French pub­lish­ing indus­try to embrace the new dig­i­tal for­mats?

And what about the French government’s con­tin­u­ing quest to pro­mul­gate the French lan­guage around the world? Will France suc­ceed in ensur­ing a steady demand for French lan­guage pub­li­ca­tions beyond French bor­ders? And if so, surely dig­i­tal for­mats would make French pub­li­ca­tions more eas­ily acces­si­ble to a broader global audi­ence if book­sellers could avoid the brick-and-mor­tar chal­lenges of inven­tory fore­cast­ing, ship­ping costs and other import-related chal­lenges.

Update

The Wall Street Jour­nal describes the role of the French gov­ern­ment in pro­tect­ing the rights of small inde­pen­dent book­sellers, and spec­u­lates on what’s in store for elec­tronic books (Sep­tem­ber 24, 2010 arti­cle). Will the same law that pro­tects small book­sellers against heavy dis­count­ing also apply to elec­tronic books?

About This Blog

Reflec­tions on life, travel, books, and yoga. Think­ing out loud about the pur­suit of mind­ful­ness and well-being.

Learn­ing how to recover from the loss of a beloved spouse, and then to find a trans­for­ma­tive path for­ward.

About Me

Semi-retired marketing exec, transitioning from a career in high tech. Now "managed" by two Tonkinese cats. Missing travel and friends on the West Coast. Avid reader and foodie. Staying active with long walks, biking, kayaking and yoga.

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