Quote:
|
The thing is, ebook readers are *not* about saving money on content. They're about a better reading experience. You *can* make an economic case for them but it rather misses the point; it's like saying TVs are about watching movies for free.
|
That is definitely NOT the case in Spain. From what I've gathered in forums (both specialised ones and others where the ebook topic has appeared), most Spanish users are primarily interested in downloading books for free from so-called "friendly sites" (aka free repositories of copyrighted works) and in having a device which doesn't hang too often. Bells and whistles like WiFi, 3G or multiple format support (aside of DOC, PDF and FB2, in which the "friendly sites" have most of their content) are of no interest to them. There are people who paid good €80 in an Netronix EB600 spinoff which only reproduced PDF files. In fact, there are many people who still haven't acquired a book in any kind of store as of yet. Adobe's registration process came as a new thing for many as
Libranda, an ebook "platform" (let's say a middleman) was launched.
Spain is a weird market for ebooks. Mainly because it's still about hardware, not about software.