An Unexpected E-Book Dilemma

Which would you choose… the Kin­dle or the iPad? After using the iPad for almost two months, that’s a no brainer. But… there’s an under­ly­ing ques­tion that I wasn’t expect­ing and that’s sur­pris­ingly inter­est­ing (to me).

There’s a book I’d like. It’s avail­able on both iBooks and Kin­dle. It’s the same price on each plat­form. Which do I buy?

The Kin­dle has the advan­tage of being more open… I can read on any com­puter (present or future, because I have con­fi­dence in Amazon’s will­ing­ness to port to new plat­forms if and when they’re avail­able). I’ve already bought a bunch of books on Kin­dle (and none on iTunes), so there’s con­sis­tency for that plat­form too. I like the way I can man­age stuff on the web with Ama­zon, but not enough to make me con­sider it a fac­tor in the decision.

On the other hand, iBooks is a bet­ter expe­ri­ence. I can dim the screen for read­ing in the dark directly from the appli­ca­tion (invari­ably I for­get, then need to leave the app, set the bright­ness, then go back… and then reset it again in the morn­ing). I also, and I can’t fig­ure out my Kin­dle books on this one… know what freak­ing page I’m on when read­ing a book in iBooks! Of course, since it would be my first iBook pur­chase, it does give me an oppor­tu­nity to try read­ing a full book on iBooks and com­pare it to my Kin­dle expe­ri­ence, and I think that last point is the deci­sion maker, except for one thing.

I love Apple prod­ucts. But… I don’t trust Apple as cus­to­dian of my con­tent nearly as much as I trust Ama­zon. And, that’s hold­ing me back.

I still buy CD’s so I can rip them myself. I buy MP3s from Ama­zon before I’d buy some­thing from iTunes.

One last thing to con­sider. My friend Sal Saieva used his vaca­tion and the book The Hap­pi­ness Project to think about how e-readers can make book read­ing social. In a pri­vate email to me, he out­lined how he’d use social read­ing to enhance his expe­ri­ence and get more out of his net­work, and out of his read­ing experience.

I don’t know enough about how the two plat­forms share high­lights and such. I know on the Kin­dle I can see what other peo­ple are high­light­ing, and I kinda like that. I don’t know if Apple does that with iBooks. Nei­ther plat­form how­ever, let’s me share/discuss my own high­lights (yet).

That would be an inter­est­ing point… except the book I’m think­ing of is a pure per­sonal read (The Chil­dren of Hurin) and so it wouldn’t make a good book for high­light­ing and sharing.

So, I’ve decided. I want to use iBooks for the “bet­ter” expe­ri­ence (admit­tedly sub­jec­tive), but I pre­fer Ama­zon as a cus­to­dian of my con­tent. So, I’m going to buy on Ama­zon. In fact, I sus­pect Ama­zon will be more aggres­sive than Apple mov­ing to a “social read­ing plat­form” so on that fac­tor as well, I’d choose Ama­zon. I’ll save my iTunes tester for a book, like a tech­ni­cal book, that would likely “expire” in rel­e­vance over time, so that I don’t care if it’s locked into Apple.

I will add one more point. The ven­dor that imple­ments book shar­ing, gets all my busi­ness from then on.

I’m sur­prised by how “into” e-books I’ve got­ten, and that I’ve become a big fan of Amazon’s Kin­dle as a result of buy­ing the iPad. And finally, I’m sur­prised by how a sim­ple equal priced book pur­chase deci­sion has led me to real­ize that the e-book space has some inter­est­ing things hap­pen­ing in it that Apple and Ama­zon need to think about.

What do you think? Have you had this deci­sion? How did you choose? What fac­tors made you decide?