A few months ago, I suggested that Barack Obama should take his oath on an electronic bible on Kindle. While that did not happen and sounded crazy at the time, it seems religious books are finally finding their way to the Kindle platform. A search for the word “bible” produced over 160 results. It seems the religious folks are realizing the importance of getting their feet wet early on with Kindle.
It would be nice to see people picking up holy books for their Kindle. But there is a good chance they won’t. And if they do, you don’t expect them to take their Kindles to a church. There is just something mystical about a soft/hard cover holy book, and it would be difficult to change people’s minds about it. Â It’d be nice to see Pope Benedict pick up a Kindle, but that is not going to happen either.
The Kindle can be great for teaching kids about religion. It’s a great educational tool. I just can’t imagine church-goers dropping their holy books and switch to Kindle anytime soon.
Your thoughts: will Kindle ever catch fire in this market?
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6 comments
#1Jack LittleMarch 10, 2009, 10:32 am
this is really great, as I like to read through the Bible every year.
#2CameronMarch 10, 2009, 8:35 pm
This is actually an area where i think the Kindle fails.
Not so much due to the device, but due to our mental models for how to interact in documents.
When dealing with religious texts it tends to be important to be able to jump around and find specific passages easily. We have been trained how to do that with a normal book, with a kindle it is just different. Honestly it might be easier on the Kindle in many ways, but it is not intuitive due to having built a very different mental map.
I do feel that everyone should read all the major religious texts that humanity has found inspiration from. But i think you should start with Dawkins The God Delusion so you can keep both sides of the issue in mind.
#3P. RadMarch 10, 2009, 10:19 pm
I completely agree with you. Imagine going to a church and trying to follow pastor jumping around the bible. It’s not impossible, but I guess it takes sometime getting used to. But more importantly, many have told me that these bibles on Kindle are not “real.” For some reason, folks have come to believe that you either get the real book or you are wasting your money. That hasn’t stopped folks from bringing these books to the Kindle platform though.
#4CameronMarch 11, 2009, 3:38 am
I think the “not real” argument will start going away quickly once we have a few things
1. Better display quality
eink is nice to read on, but being only in B&W, and not being able to do moving picture, i think makes it look like a dated technology. As both LCD and eink get better, i think ebook readers will improve by leaps and bounds for the general public
2. More interactive documents
Books/documents need to be updated to take advantage of the technology we have. My vision is something that is more towards a webpage than a book. Think of a highly interactive bible, that you can read like a regular bible, but also links to everything the bible talking about and included more visuals.
Those two things taken together will add value to ebooks for the general public
#5KarynMarch 11, 2009, 8:59 am
The bible was one of the first books I purchased for my kindle last year. I haven’t used it much because it is not easy to work your way around in it (as mentioned in earlier posts). The bible on my iphone is easier to use. But my kindle wouldn’t be complete without it!
#6steveNovember 25, 2010, 6:34 pm
I agree with most of above. Kindle is a great way of carrying many versions of the Bible plus commentaries, Bible Dictionaries ect. Ithe problem is cost of some of the better Translations ie NKJV study Bible, Amplified. Also speed of finding individual verses..
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