Since I’m in the publishing business, writing books and whatnot, I figured I’d share my thoughts on the new Kindles.

First of all, I don’t own a Kindle. I have played with the original one and Kindle DX, but haven’t bothered to buy one. My (extensive, bordering to exclusive) Kindle reading is done on an iPad. I might remedy that now though, because Amazon sure is making it hard not to just buy one. That is, if I can have someone in America ship it to me, the Kindles are still not shipped to Sweden.

So, my thoughts then.

Kindle Fire

Let’s start with Kindle Fire, the tablet that won’t really go head to head with the much more expensive iPad, but might make a dent in iPod touch sales.

• This is a consumption device for now, and you’ll primarily consume content from Amazon. That’s why they are selling it for $199, probably at a loss. You’ll buy stuff for it, and pay for Amazon’s loss per unit that way.
• Kindle Fire runs Android but you won’t see that. It uses Amazon’s App Store and interface. Good call, Amazon.
• The Amazon Silk web browser is intriguing and should improve your web experience by doing the heavy lifting in Amazon’s cloud. I am a bit turned off by it however, since this means Amazon knows a bit much about what I’m doing online.

Will I buy it? I’d like to play with one for sure, but I don’t see where this will fit in my usage since Amazon’s services are US-centric. And I’ve already got a bunch of iPads, so probably not.

Want to buy it? Then you could use this link to the Kindle Fire product page to give me commission on your purchase.

Kindle Touch

A touch screen Kindle without any physical keyboard and buttons for page flipping, and it is cheap too. This one will sell, that’s for sure.

• This thing is cheap, $99 with ads or $139 without for the wifi version. Does not ship with a power adapter, just a USB cable so if you want to charge this thing away from a computer you’ll need to buy an adapter too.
• Available in both a 3G and a wifi version. If you travel a lot then the 3G version is probably the way to go.
• I’ve played with several e-ink readers and no touchscreen have felt responsive enough to me, so hopefully Kindle Touch will perform better. This is fine when browsing for books and for the occasional search, but since Kindle Touch lacks page-flipping buttons you’ll have to rely on the touchscreen for that too. I’m not sure that’s such a good idea, but I’ll give it the benefit of a doubt.
• Love the specs, weight and size and whatnot.

Will I buy it? Yep, I’ll find someone to ship this from the US for me. The new Kindle (below) would probably do, but I hate the D-pad buttons for navigating the interface and gladly spend the extra money to get away from that. I’ll most likely buy the wifi version though, because I’m not sure how well the free 3G thing will work out in Europe.

You can buy (and read up on) Kindle Touch from Amazon using this link, and give me a few dollars in the process.

Kindle

The new Kindle, billed just “Kindle”, is a cheap and awesome little e-ink reader lacking a physical keyboard. This will further add to the ebook boom in general, and the growth and maturity of the Kindle store in particular.

• If you thought Kindle Touch was cheap, then the new Kindle is dirt cheap. $79 with ads and $109 without. No power adapter here either, so you’ll have to buy that if you want to charge the Kindle away from a USB socket.
• Awesome size and specs.
• No physical keyboard is fine, but the Kindle D-pad really isn’t the way to do, well anything really. For $20 more you can get a touchscreen instead, so this device is for people on a budget.

Will I buy it? Nope, I’ll add the extra dollars to get the Kindle Touch, and chances are you should too. I like the fact that this device is available as an alternative though, but it could still be cheaper, at least compared to the rest of the lineup.

If you want to buy the Kindle and give me some change in the process you can use this link to view the product page on Amazon.

We’ll cover the editing and production and then publish the piece to the various eBook singles platforms (Kindle, Apple, etc.) with a reasonable price: $1 to $3. Then we’ll handle advertising the piece on our NYC site. If this experiment makes a profit, we’ll share them with the writer once we’ve recouped our initial costs. Will this work? We’re not sure—but we want to find out.

I love it. The concept isn’t exactly new, new ventures such as Byliner are already dabbling in it in an organized fashion, but it is awesome nonetheless.

I’m going to write four books this year.

I’ll also see to it that four books get published this year.

That last one isn’t as tough as it would seem, as Smashing WordPress Themes: Making WordPress Beautiful is already out (that’s one), and the second edition of Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog is due in April (that’s two). I’ve got another book approved, which I won’t talk about yet, but assuming nothing weird happens (contract’s not signed yet) it should be on the bookshelves after the Summer (that’s three).

This year I’ll also publish some ebooks. I’m really excited by how well the first edition of Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog did for the Kindle, and I want to play around with this. That means I’ll most likely self-publish some works digitally to allow myself to experiment, and not just tech books either. Scary territory that, scary and exciting.

So there you have it. I’ll write four books, and I’ll see (at least) four books published. Those four books aren’t necessarily the same titles, as I know that the publishing world isn’t particularly fast moving.

Now I’ve said it, can’t take it back!

You see, I write somewhere between 20 and 50 emails a day from my iPhone, I tweet and connect on Facebook, I read up on news and I entertain myself. It is a brilliant multi-purpose device that saves me time, something that is really valuable to me.

Realizing that, I would be a fool not to be the least curious, nay, thrilled about the prospect of an Apple tablet.

There are a ton of more or less likely predictions out there. Some I truly believe, like the fact that this will be a kick in the Amazon Kindle’s nuts because Steve Jobs wants to rule the media industry and newspapers, books and magazines would look and work great on a nice touchscreen interface. I also think that it is a no-brainer that the tablet will play games, and the success of the iPhone means that the developers are onboard. Jus don’t expect it to be a game changer just right now, it’ll most likely cost more than two PlayStation 3s and that means that the install base for gaming will be a lot smaller than for iPhone and iPod touch. That being said, obviously it’ll run games and it will do it good.

Moving on, I do believe we’ll get cameras so that we can Skype, and this thing without 3G would be a crime. Most likely we’ll also get some sort of iLife package with great multitouch support, and everything we got in our iPhones, only more Macish.

All that is pretty uncontroversial stuff. You’ve heard it before. I want all that.

Now here is what I really hope for, but really can’t believe will happen. Still, one can dream right?

I want the tablet to be no bigger than 11″, hopefully smaller so that it will be really portable. I want it to have an onscreen keyboard, obviously, but also support Bluetooth keyboards. Maybe that is one off the reasons Apple made the wireless keyboard so small, for portability? Hardly, but it is an encouraging albeit unlikely thought for my reasoning. Anyway, the tablet needs a stand so that I can put it on a table, in both landscape and portrait mode.

Now here’s the killer: I want the tablet to replace the MacBook Air!

“What? Why? And don’t you love your Air?!”

I most certainly do, but I would love a stronger oversized iPhone with multitasking, decent image editing, video viewing, hyper portable Mac with an optional keyboard even more! I don’t care if the tablet is priced as an Air, or worse – that I would buy. As a writer, that Is the ideal machine to take on the road and to use at home. I could set it up on the living room table, lie down on the couch and type away on my wireless keyboard, now wouldn’t that be grand? It would for me at least.

Here’s hoping my dream will come through, however unlikely. Until then I’ll have to make do with a jailbroken iPhone, the BTstack Keyboard driver, and the Gorillapod to top it off. But it just isn’t quite enough.

Please Apple? Pretty please?

Footnote 1: First image swiped from CrunchGear’s unicorn post, and the second from Gizmodo’s post on Apple Bashful, which I would’ve loved by the way…

Footnote 2: I wrote this whole thing in WriteRoom on my iPhone. That might tell you how much I’d love an Apple tablet geared toward me as a writer…