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Harvey Chute is a bookworm. He will
read at airports and on planes. He will read at night by the light
of his bedside lamp. He will read at the slightest opportunity. He
devours book after book and has done so for a large part of his
47-year-old life. Harvey Chute is not the kind of guy you would
expect to replace his paper books with an electronic book reader.
And it was not on the cards that Chute would be one of the driving
forces behind the most active Internet forum for Kindle owners. "My
first, instinctive, reaction to Kindle was similar to many book
lovers: an interest in it, mixed with some scepticism about the
ebook experience. I love the physical feel of paper books, even the
smell of them," Chute tells Blink. But on a trip to Atlanta,
Georgia, he met the future in a coffee bar. "I saw a lady using an
original Kindle and asked her about it. She was enthusiastic and
insisted that I give it a try. It was my first time viewing an
e-ink screen, and it didn't take long for me to 'get it'. I knew at
that point that, for me, this was going to be the preferred way to
do long-form reading."
Harvey Chute was sold on a new way of
reading. Amazon's electronic book reader had entered his life, and
today the Chute family are the proud owners of no less than three
Kindles. "My wife has an original Kindle; and I have the current 6"
Kindle ('Kindle 2') as well as a Kindle DX," says Chute. He
continues: "Kindle has definitely changed my reading habits for the
better. I find it much easier to discover new books and convenient
to download those books right from my Kindle. All of our Kindles
are on the same Amazon account, so when my wife recommends a book
to me that she has downloaded, I can immediately get it on my
Kindle without having to pay again for it." Chute is by no means
the only Kindle fan. At Christmas 2009, ebook sales overtook sales
of physical books on Amazon, and the surge seems unstoppable. The
evolution from paper to pixel is taking place at lightning speed.
On its peak day, 14 December 2009, Amazon shipped 9.5 million
Kindles - the equivalent of almost 110 per second - to expectant
readers worldwide, according to an official announcement from Jeff
Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.
But Kindle is much more than just a
success for Amazon - there is also a community and an ecosystem of
related products emerging around the device. An example is Harvey
Chute's KindleBoards.com, the largest independent website aimed at
anyone with an interest in Kindle. Since November 2007, 8,000
members have made more than 300,000 posts between them, and the
number of page views has exceeded 22 million "Our members use our
forums to express their passion in terms of ebook recommendations,
ebook clubs, tips on ebook bargains and reviews of Kindle
accessories," says Chute, who founded KindleBoards because this was
the perfect combination of his two interests, gadgets and books.
There is no doubt in his mind why his site has become so
successful: it is not about ebooks or ereaders in general - it is
exclusively about the reading experience associated with a Kindle.
"I think our focus on Kindle has been a benefit for us. Kindle has
quickly moved to a prominent position in the ereader market, and
there are a lot of Kindle owners out there now. When they have
questions or comments, they usually want to address those to people
familiar with Kindle, not to ereaders or tech-gadget fans in
general. That focus has also helped us generate a high level of
expertise on Kindle. Our moderators, and many of our members, are
deeply familiar with Kindle usage, troubleshooting and other tips.
So for a Kindle owner, it's a natural one-stop," he says. Indeed a
one-stop which is also a starting point for authors, both
established and unknown, who now have new opportunities for getting
readers for their books thanks to Kindle and the community around
it.
A number of unknown authors are
self-publishing their books as free or paid downloads on the Amazon
platform. In addition, a substantial number of books which are so
old that nobody owns the rights any longer can be downloaded to the
Kindle. As reported by the Los Angeles Times at the end of December
2009, 64 of Amazon's top 100 Kindle titles were priced at USD 0.00.
To the book industry, a price of USD 0.00 sounds shocking,
but for an unknown author, an ebook priced at USD 0.00 could
launch a very lucrative career. "In fact, one author, Boyd
Morrison, who selfpublished his book 'The Ark' on Kindle, became
very popular on KindleBoards and was subsequently signed to a
publishing deal from a subsidiary of Simon & Schuster," says
Harvey Chute. The book and its sequel are scheduled for release in
16 countries so far in 2010.
The evolution towards digital
distribution and storage of books is unstoppable. The sales figures
for Amazon's ereader are phenomenal. The community and the
ecosystem around Amazon's Kindle are impressive and growing day by
day. However, all of this is driven by the spiritual union which
evolves between author and reader as the story unfolds. Thus, when
Harvey Chute goes to bed at night in Bellingham, Washington, he
will switch on his bedside lamp and his Kindle to immerse himself
in a book because, as he concludes the interview, " To use a bad
pun, it really has rekindled my enjoyment of good books."
For more information please have a
look at Harvey Chute's independent Kindle
community.