The Reading Edge Podcast

I interviewed Seth Godin this morning via Skype.  He is the author of Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?, published last month for Kindle, nook, Sony Reader, and hardcover.  It’s a great read, and if you purchase it on Kindle by about March 1 you’ll receive a free personal addendum, Insubordinate, in which Seth describes several people who qualify as linchpins.  What’s a linchpin?  That’s someone who has found his or her true work, as an artist does, and is overcoming the resistance of the lizard brain to actually ship stuff that matters, because it’s original and given freely.

In the early going, my own lizard brain resisted with a couple of clever arguments (noted in this blog post) to Seth’s exhortation, which will come as no surprise to him.  Lizard-like resistance is what a linchpin always faces and overcomes.

In addition to his new book, we talked about Seth’s critique of the traditional publishing industry and his vision of how Amazon, or someone, could remake the eBook platform into something much more compelling as a way for authors and readers to connect.

I prepared for our conversation by watching videos of Seth’s TED talk in May, 2009, and his presentation at last year’s O’Reilly Tools of Change conference.

Here is a complete list of Seth’s previous books.

Click here to download this episode.

My review of the BookGem eBook holder, which I purchased for $14.95 from BookGem.com . In the video I demonstrate how it works with a Kindle, a nook, a Sony Reader Daily Edition, and a Kindle DX. The only one I tried that did not work well with this useful holder was my original Kindle, because the spring-loaded clamps landed on the keyboard.

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James McQuivey of Forrester Research

On the Monday after the weekend when Amazon and Macmillan faced off in a dramatic battle over eBook pricing, I turned to James McQuivey, a vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research, for his perspective on who won, what the stakes are, and what might lie ahead.

James says his contacts at other publishers are disappointed that this turned into a mud fight, but he suggests there will be benefits from having the issue finally out in the open.  He also shares his thoughts on how Apple’s new iPad figures in to all this.

I’ll have the second half of this interview on The Kindle Chronicles episode 81, which will be uploaded as usual on Friday, February 5.  In that portion, James will discuss what he and his teammates at Forrester are calling “The Kindle Flame,” by which they mean the next generation of Kindle that might, if it gets certain things right, set the eBook market fully ablaze as opposed to merely kindled.

Click here to download this episode.

This is the conclusion of my January 27, 2010, interview with New York Times technology reporter Brad Stone.  For the first part of the interview, please check out Episode 80 of my other podcast, The Kindle Chronicles.  We spoke the evening after Brad had attended Apple’s unveiling of the iPad.

In this segment, Brad looks ahead at Amazon’s next moves and comments.  He’s found 46 new jobs posted at Amazon’s Lab126, the group that makes and advances the Kindle. Brad says at one point, “The Kindle tablet may be right around the corner.”

Following the interview, I’ve included a fair-use excerpt of audio from Steve Jobs’s comments about the Kindle and the new iBooks app which will come on the iPad, setting up a high-stakes strategic battle between Apple and Amazon.  Does Steve sound as if he’s got his heart in this fight?  Listen, and decide.

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Regina Sergiyenko of Pocketbook USA

This episode contains three more interviews from the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas earlier this month.

First up is Laura Wu, a product manager for Netronix, Inc., the Taiwan-based maker of eReaders for Interead, Bookeen, and Pocketbook USA, among others.  Laura confirmed reports that Netronix plans to sell a million eReaders in 2010.

Phil Wood, marketing director at Interead, said the U.K.-based company relies on Netronix for some of its products, but not all of them.

Regina Sergiyenko, regional director in the US for the Ukraine-based Pocketbook, emphasized the fact that her company’s product is available in many languages.

Click here to download this episode.

Paul Miller, Senior Associate Editor at Engadget and a regular on the weekly Engadget podcast, had a chance to see something at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that we missed – the very enticing Mirasol screen by Qualcomm.  Rumor had it that this will be the screen on the next Kindle, perhaps later this year.

In a Skype-to-Skype call on January 19, 2010, we talked about eReaders, screens, and the nearly and mercifully to-be-ended speculation leading up to the unveiling of Apple’s “latest creation” in San Francisco on January 27.  Paul and the rest of the Engadget gang will be liveblogging the spectacle, and they’re whom I’ll be following for every last “one more thing.”

Click here to download this episode.

This is the unboxing video for my Sony Reader Daily Edition, which arrived today, with side-by-side comparisons with my Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble nook.  (Don’t worry about the black screen; if you click on it the video will play.)

My wife Darlene and agreed that, on first impression, the Daily Edition’s screen readability is markedly inferior to that of the Kindle and nook.  Of the latter two, we found that the nook’s contrast seems slightly better, because the background to the text is lighter.  See for yourself in the video.

The Daily Edition is gorgeous, but it feels like a different animal in the eBook jungle.  It feels like a machine, a handsomely designed machine, but one better suited for a corporate road warrior than a bookish reader.  For example, I doubt there will be a big market for pretty skins and fancy covers for the Daily Edition, whose official name is PRS-900BC.  It’s just not that sort of device.  Plus, it already comes with a cover that’s attached to it, and I haven’t figured out yet if you can remove it to make way for something that, say, Oberon or M-Edge Accessories might create for it.

That said, I’m looking forward to playing with the Daily Edition. The touch screen seems much more responsive to that of the nook’s lower panel. It failed to find the Sony Reader Store tonight while we were in the dining room.  Just to check the competition, I fired up the Kindle and it found the mothership in seconds.

The Daily Edition isn’t cheap. At $399 it bears a hefty $140 premium over the Kindle and the nook.