Re: The right device at last?

Brenna Lyons wrote:

> Ultimately, there should be two types of readers...the do it all ones,
> as you noted...AND a simple, durable, AFFORDABLE dedicated device. The
> right device is never going to be an overpriced dedicated reader, I
> agree. Let me explain why that is. Simply put, to get the readers into
> SCHOOLS, you need something the kids can't play music on, can't play
> games on, can't send text messages on, and so on. That's the only
> reason my oldest is allowed to carry her eBookwise to school with
> her...all it's set up to do is read books. No more. No less. Now, if
> we had a durable dedicated reader that came in (say, for argument)
> under $50, we'd have e-books in the schools.


An excellent point and one I'd probably never have thought of myself. 
I've spent most of my working life focusing on the retail markets with 
an on-going personal interest in technology-related developments and 
their effect on the book business. I don't have kids and have never 
spent much time dealing with the educational markets so thinking about 
e-books in the schools wasn't even on my radar. Of course, all the 
publishers with a vested interest in selling new paper textbooks every 
year are probably not going to be offering much in the way of 
encouragement to finding a technology that could sharply curtail their 
revenue volumes but that's probably no different from trade print 
publishers who are dancing around an interest in e-books while trying 
not to lose a dime of their already established business.

And it makes a lot of sense, long-term, to focus on getting e-book 
readers into schools because that will help to create a new generation 
of readers for whom paper books are not the preferred medium--if we 
assume that the schools won't ruin the opportunity by making reading in 
a brand-new technologically advanced way an unwelcome chore to way too 
many students. Given their track record over the last centrury, though, 
that might be a much too optimistic assumption to make.

John Douglas
www.ereads.com

-- 
John R. Douglas
johnd16555_at_gmail dot com




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