Amazon have released the Kindle reigniting the debate over the future of the book pulling in comments from many people such as John Scalzi over at Whatever and Paul Raven over at Velcro City. Meanwhile Neil Gaiman‘s got in on the action, you can check out his thoughts here.

Neil makes a pretty compelling argument for the Kindle’s place in the world (for people who are mobile, people in remote locations and people who need to carry lots of books around). I remain more of a skeptic, not so much about the principle as someone is going to do it sooner or later, no my doubts are more about this device and the business model.

Sure mass storage is a great boon, I travel more these days myself and I could do without that moment of panic as to whether that fourth book is going to put me over the baggage allowance, yet it is the issue of battery life that really gets me.

I’m absent minded and busy. Between my job, my writing and trying to renovate my house I forget to charge my phone, my ipod (now a new ipod touch – yay!) and various other gadgets on a regular basis. I do not want to run out of power just as Poirot is explaining who did it or King is pulling the monster out of the closet. My paperback does not require charging, is already portable and barring fire or flood pretty durable. In short I need a bit more than “you can carry more” – I’m pretty skilled in secreting paperbacks all over my personage.

So this is my question: Why can’t they produce one with a solar powered battery? Because that coupled with mass storage and a screen as readable as a book…well that would be a break through device. That would take publishing properly digital.

The other slight bone of contention is the pricing model, it doesn’t seem to have been thought out and raises all sorts of issues such as “how much goes to the author?”, “why would someone pay for newspaper subs when you can access it online for free?”, “is there even a role for the publisher?” and my personal favourite “I don’t want to buy from Amazon as I’m worried about independent booksellers”. This is a second order problem but it won’t go away.

Of course the fact that I will almost certainly run out and buy one as soon as it’s available in the UK is neither here nor there. That’s a post for a different day – possibly entitled OCD and how to live with it or Gadgets: An addiction or a choice?