Quote:
Originally Posted by plib
FFS. It might not have been a Kindle or a Kobo but I was reading ebooks on a Palm Zire71 in 2003. It might not have been a game changer at the time, but it certainly should have been an indication to someone whose livelihood depended on predicting the future of his industry. That is if they even knew what a Zire71 was.
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That's all I'm trying to say... you said it better (emphasis added by me).
Someone correctly guessed that the "reading public" just
might be willing to embrace ebooks. Then Sony & Amazon gambled that the reading public
might embrace a dedicated device to read those ebooks on.
Is Shatzkin asking me to believe
tech companies had some sort of special insight—or magic eight-ball—that allowed them to ascertain what
readers of books might be willing to embrace in the way
books are read? More so than the publishers who rely on those same readers for their livelihood? If that's true, then they
deserve to be fighting and clawing for relevance right now.