Re: "The Elusive E-book"

On Wed, May 7, 2008 at 9:07 PM, joseph harris <[email protected]> wrote:

>
> Which leaves the interesting question:  To what extent has the
> stand-alone ebook a future?


We still don't have the ideal reader for ebooks—something that is easy to
read, easy to use, cheap, and durable. Ebooks are still in their "early
adopter" phase.

I know I wouldn't buy a Kindle, and I *like* reading ebooks. It's just too
expensive.

Remember when mp3s and other digital music were the sole province of
"pirates" and warez sites? Then along came the iPod, and boom—suddenly Apple
is the number one or two music store in the USA.

Until there's a device that is to ebooks what the iPod was to mp3s, printed
books are in no danger, and it doesn't really matter whether ebooks are
given away free or not—the price of the device for entry is so high that the
difference between adding zero bucks to that price and adding five or ten or
twenty bucks to that price to buy a book to put on it is trivial. We haven't
gotten that device yet.

Give it a decade or so for cheap epaper to become a reality, and then we'll
see. Or maybe two decades. Or who knows, maybe even never?

-- 
Chris Meadows aka | WWW: http://www.terrania.us | Somebody help,
Robotech_Master | ICQ: 5477383 AIM: RoboMastr | I'm trapped in
[email protected] | Skype, Gizmo: Robotech_Master | a sig file!
[email protected] | Yahoo: robotech_master_2000 |


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