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Quote of the Day
Sep. 6th, 2007 09:26 am"Digital readers are not a replacement for a print book; they are a replacement for a stack of print books." --Ron Hawkins, vice president for portable reader systems at Sony
The full article is here in today's New York Times. It's funny that after talking about paper books for the last couple of days that this showed up in my inbox this morning.
My inbox? Yep. If there's one type of reading I hate to do in print, it's newspapers. They're bulky, difficult to manage (perhaps because I have short arms), and get black ink on my fingers. Ever have that frustration folding maps? That applies to newspapers for me as well. So I read all my news online.
As for the new e-book reader amazon's unveiling for the holidays... I keep hoping that one will come out that changes the market. The Sony reader may already be that machine (although the wireless connection to amazon the new one is offering is pretty darn clever). The comics industry has been abuzz (not loudly, but a bit) about the iPhone catching Americans up to our Japanese counterparts in being able to read our comics via cell phone.
But here's my guess: e-book readers of any stripe won't make it in the market until they're considered affordable by people who buy books. If I have to pay more for an e-book reader (Sony's was priced at $300, according to the article) than I have to pay for a video game console (the Wii started out at a lower price point, and a refurbished X-box 360 is between $150 and $200 these days), I'm going to keep buying paperbacks.
Now, if I were still a college student and my textbooks were being made available via e-book? That would be tempting. Particularly if the e-book reader could highlight, mark pages, search, etc. (which I believe the old Rocket Book could do, so I can't imagine the new ones are too far behind). If the choice was between paying $200 per course book or $300 for a reader (which would work for all four years) even $50 per book, I'd seriously, seriously consider it. That's the market where I think the e-book has the best chance to succeed (carrying a paperback-sized machine around to afternoon classes instead of two large textbooks), and I haven't seen any of the companies putting out readers really pursue that.
Anyway, interesting article. I wouldn't mind having all of wikipedia on a portable e-book reader (as I heard from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jeff_duntemann's blog not too long ago that they do have a download function). But for now I've got my laptop. And it has solitaire.
The full article is here in today's New York Times. It's funny that after talking about paper books for the last couple of days that this showed up in my inbox this morning.
My inbox? Yep. If there's one type of reading I hate to do in print, it's newspapers. They're bulky, difficult to manage (perhaps because I have short arms), and get black ink on my fingers. Ever have that frustration folding maps? That applies to newspapers for me as well. So I read all my news online.
As for the new e-book reader amazon's unveiling for the holidays... I keep hoping that one will come out that changes the market. The Sony reader may already be that machine (although the wireless connection to amazon the new one is offering is pretty darn clever). The comics industry has been abuzz (not loudly, but a bit) about the iPhone catching Americans up to our Japanese counterparts in being able to read our comics via cell phone.
But here's my guess: e-book readers of any stripe won't make it in the market until they're considered affordable by people who buy books. If I have to pay more for an e-book reader (Sony's was priced at $300, according to the article) than I have to pay for a video game console (the Wii started out at a lower price point, and a refurbished X-box 360 is between $150 and $200 these days), I'm going to keep buying paperbacks.
Now, if I were still a college student and my textbooks were being made available via e-book? That would be tempting. Particularly if the e-book reader could highlight, mark pages, search, etc. (which I believe the old Rocket Book could do, so I can't imagine the new ones are too far behind). If the choice was between paying $200 per course book or $300 for a reader (which would work for all four years) even $50 per book, I'd seriously, seriously consider it. That's the market where I think the e-book has the best chance to succeed (carrying a paperback-sized machine around to afternoon classes instead of two large textbooks), and I haven't seen any of the companies putting out readers really pursue that.
Anyway, interesting article. I wouldn't mind having all of wikipedia on a portable e-book reader (as I heard from
jeff_duntemann's blog not too long ago that they do have a download function). But for now I've got my laptop. And it has solitaire.
