Kindle 2's price cut to $299. Who will care?

Yesterday Amazon announced that everyone's favorite eBook reader is having its price slashed again- from $359 to $299. This appears to be the result of the company that assembles the Kindle - Prime View - acquiring the company responsible for that eye-saving screen technology- E-ink. This appears to be just the first step in one of many as the technology gets more sophisticated and cheaper to produce. And amazon has chosen to pass the savings on to you. Gotta love it.

Now you might expect this to mean that you'll see eReaders in the hands of everyone- saving the newspaper industry single-handedly. Not so fast. I don't think the market is ripe for such a device.

The problem you have is no group to adopt the item quickly. Your usual early adopters- teens and young adults- let's face it- don't read. And your big readers- the baby boomers and older - are going to be slow to adopt new technology, or actively resistant to it.

You just describe the Kindle to your mom, and she will inevitably say the same few things. I like holding a book in my hands. I like having them all on my shelf to look at. I like seeing by the thinkness of the book how far done I am. All related to the comfort the person associates with reading and their physical connection to a book. And these are valid points. Reading is a VERY intimate act, and people want to be comfortable while they do it.

How about the feeling This is my favorite book ever- and I love it. Imagine, dear reader, your favorite book is just a digital file, a candle in the wind waiting to be snuffed out when your external hard drive crashes. A fearful thought for many. Until the kindle adresses the personality of the product, so it is one that the user loves as his/her favorite book, they will not be able to penetrate that market.

Now in regard to tweens and teens- there is slim to no interest here. Reading is a long and involved task, and getting this generation to slow down and take notice is no easy task. The way into the hearts and minds of these ones is through textbooks, an area Amazon has already made some progress into. College students spend several hundred dollars every semester to buy books- big, heavy books that cause almost as much back pain as they do financial pain. And the key- students have little or no attachment to their Macroeconomics textbook, nor do they want to read it cover to cover.

Perhaps the intent of Amazon is not to replace the book, but to supplement it. But if they want to make young people adopt their product, the only way in I see is through academia. So the price cut should make little to no difference- I know of no one waiting on buying a Kindle beacause its just too expensive.