- Form factor is slippery on the back, and doesn't always feel secure in my hands, particularly if they're greasy or sweaty for any reason. Some grooves or bumps would go a long way there.
- I never realized how much abuse paperbacks can take until I got the Kindle. I frequently feel like it wouldn't survive in some scenarios that a book would, e.g. falling off a treadmill, or thrown into the back seat of a car.
- The Next Page button on the right side of my kindle is loose, and has been since the first day I got it.
- I'd like the ability to fold the kindle in half and put it in my pocket.
- Many books (including professional ones) have typesetting or translation errors (especially with hyphens and page or chapter headers). I'll forgive that for $0.99 books, but not for $9.99 ones
- The navigation is decent, but several tasks would benefit from direct keyboard shortcuts, without sending me through the (slow) tracking widget interface.
- Dictionary support is really nice, except for two things. First, if it can't find a word, it should tell me immediately, instead of leaving me waiting and reporting nothing for the word at the cursor.
- The dictionary lookup should be smart enough to infer the part of speech of a word from its usage (in many circumstances) and show me the definition for that part of speech first. Frequently, the most common definition for a word is the definition I already know.
- The contrast ratio isn't quite as black & white as I wanted; I think the Sony reader has it beat on that point.
- Unicode support is way behind, especially with Asian languages and mathematical fonts. I've got course notes and digital books that don't work (but should).
- Reflow in PDF documents is a must. Currently, PDFs can't be resized intelligently on the device, and that's a drag for two-column journal articles and things.
- Sample books are great, but once I've read my sample all the way through and bought the book itself, I have to sift through it to find my place. There's no synchronization with the end of the sample content in the newly purchased book. Am I doing that wrong?
- The "sync to furthest page read" only works if I've been reading on more than one device, apparently. It's no help when I want to get back to where I was after jumping backward.
- There should be a reverse search feature as well as a forward search.
- Navigation is frequently painful, as the device doesn't take advantage of its keyboard for navigation. The web browser could associate hyperlinks with letters and numbers so I don't have to move the little widget around. Menu entries should also have hotkeys; I hate waiting for the screen refresh when navigating this way.
- The busy/progress indicator could be implemented as an LED off-screen so that the screen doesn't have to continuously be updated during a download or other slow activity.
- The size and position of the buttons isn't especially intuitive, or convenient for someone with big hands. It'd be nice to have a next page button available on the back and top of the unit.
- If I buy a physical book from amazon and it doesn't yet have a kindle edition, send me the kindle version free (or at a steep discount) when it comes out
- There's no reason I should have to buy whole books at once for $10; I'd like the option to pay a chapter at a time
- A Netflix/XM pricing model: $x/month for y books "checked out" at a time. In many cases, I'd prefer to pay while I'm reading a book only, especially if I can't lend it to friends or sell it when I'm done with it anyway. In many ways a rental model makes more sense to me.
- A pay-per-page model option would be nice. That way I'd never pay for a page I hadn't read.
- The ability to sell, trade, or donate purchased Kindle books to other users
- An option to trade in hard copies for a digital edition. Amazon could then resell the hard copies used.
- I should get a discount on future editions of an ebook I've purchased in exchange for some of the rights I would've had with a physical book. (That is, if the kindle edition is mine forever, I would like a relationship with the author & publisher that keeps my book up to date)
- I should be able to return a partially-read book for a prorated discount if I lose interest or am not satisfied
- Prices for physical & ebooks should be broken down more transparently. Exactly how much of a physical book comes from (a) ownership in the physical sense, (b) materials, binding, shipping (i.e. the "dead tree tax"), and (c) the content itself. The price of a Kindle edition should just be (c) plus the cost of downloading it. There's a real opportunity to win over consumers alienated by Apple's DRM scheme.
- Subscriptions to individual authors would be interesting. Consumers could help pay advances for popular, independent authors by pre-paying for the next book (or next chapter). Eventually a model like this could take publishers out of the picture entirely.
- The pricing for blogs is exorbitant. I shouldn't have to pay for RSS distribution of free content. At the very least, give me the option of paying for the bandwidth instead.
- From any page in any book, I should be able to access relevant comments and notes from other amazon readers online, social network style. Not that I'd want to; very often.
- Audiobook tracks should be discounted for purchasers of the kindle edition. Basically there should be clear-cut and well defined ownership/readership rights to all the content.
- I want an API
Finally, I found at least one sho' nuff bug:
- In the book Glory Road, I tried to look up the word "wards" in several places, and each time the dictionary brought up the entry for "ocean".
