Quote:
Originally Posted by JackieFrost
Points well taken, Dmc. You 'll definetely bump on my thread at the books sub-forum where I ll be asking for introductory books on investment. No, seriously. I am a computer scientist and I 've never dwelved into investing beyond the very basics, so excuse my ignorance and thanks for the free mini lecture! I can appreciate what you are saying, makes perfect sense, all of it.
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Note that I'm
not saying "Don't invest in ebooks". I
am saying "Be clear about what you expect to gain, what you'll do if that
doesn't happen, and how much you are prepared to commit to the investment.
Essentially, have an exit strategy, don't but all your eggs in one basket, and understand the risks and rewards involved.
A bigger question is what ebook related investments exist, and frankly, I haven't the foggiest idea. Amazon and Sony are both making ebook readers and selling ebooks, but ebooks are a small fraction of their total business, and unlikely to affect their bottom line (and therefor, their stock price) a great deal one way or the other.
iRex, Bookeen, and a few other places make dedicated readers that are niche market devices. They do well enough to stay in business, and they
are "pure plays" in ebook technology, but I don't know if their shares are publicly available and I wouldn't expect dramatic gains in the value of my holding if they were. And some of the readers are made by folks like Chinese manufactures, where I suspect you
can't invest in them.
There are a few ebook distributors like Fictionwise (who also now owns eReader.) Again, I have no idea about availability of stock.
Since the critical differentiators in eBook readers tend to be the displays used, on place that might bear looking at is manufacturers of displays. PVI is the sole source eInk displays, and I don't know about stock availability, but there are some other outfits I've seen news items on investigating different technologies for displays. eInk is popular because it's a clear, crisp, easy to read display, with very low power requirements. My reading device of choice is a Palm OS PDA. The screen must be continuously refreshed, and battery life is largely a function of the brightness setting. eInk avoids that issue.
(I need color, which eInk doesn't currently support, and a devices that does other things besides display ebooks, so an eInk device isn't an option for me.)
I don't see investments in publishers as great sources of gain. Publishers are slowly discovering ebooks and beginning to offer them, but ebooks sell to the same market that buys paper books. Unless books in electronic form can dramatically increase the size of the book buying market, I don't see publishing making significant gains from selling ebooks as well as paper editions.
Beyond that. I'm not sure what ebook related opportunities might exist.
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Dennis