Jonathan Coe: Amazon's Kindle is wrong
British author likes the idea of ebooks, just not the execution
Best-selling British author Jonathan Coe is sold on the idea of the eBook, he's just not sold on the current crop of devices.
Speaking at the Latitude Festival, the author admitted that he sees "all sorts of possibilities just a few years away..… but at the moment ebooks are all designed so wrong. The Kindle is completely wrong."
Coe is no Luddite, however, adding that while there are "many readers who are wedded to the feel and texture of the book… for me the words themselves are more important.
"In fact, the idea of carrying thousands of books with me in just one device really appeals," he continued. "How long will it take for manufacturers to get an ideas as right as Apple did with the iPod?"
Words AND music
Coe would like to see a new device that "combines words and music", something that could even perhaps create music to match his mood while he was writing.
From the latest round of Apple rumours, it sounds very much like Steve Jobs would also like to see such a device...
Get daily insight, inspiration and deals in your inbox
Sign up for breaking news, reviews, opinion, top tech deals, and more.
TechRadar looks forward to reading Coe's next book, from which the Latitude festival crowd were treated with a reading. The central character sounds like a bit of a new media chancer and is described as the "sort of person with hundreds of Facebook friends but no one to talk to when his marriage breaks up".
Via Wired UK