Hey everybody,
my name is Chris and I live in Bavaria, Germany.
For my final research paper on "E-Book reading devices and their impact on the booktrade" I have checked a lot with the mobileread wiki, and thought it appropriate, to sign up with the forum now as well, as I hope to maybe get some more answers to some questions, I found necessary asking. (More of this in more appropriate places.)
A little more of myself I guess: I'm spending my (hopefully) last year of university right now, studying History and Book Studies. Six years ago, when I started at university, I used to forage mainly for historical book debates, writing essays on incunabula, manuscripts and early printers, doing research on parchment, papyrus and bibliophiles. About a year ago I attended a class for a semester, focusing on the future of the book, concerning itself with E-Books, E-Book reading devices, screens, reading habits on screens, DRM, watermarks and digital libraries. Together with a friend of mine, we gave our speech on E-Book reading devices. While I took up early proprietary E-readers like Rocket E-Book, the early Cybook and Softbook, but mobile phones, notebooks and PDAs as readers as well, he concerted on E-Paper devices.
One year ago, we had to decide on subjects for our final papers. When the friend of mine decided for a something in history, I went with E-Paper, as with Amazon's Kindle a new era was about to start then, interesting enough for a paper and my now changed interest from historical to modern issues. Thus it came to be that I'm here.
And I'm hoping for some good advices, ideas and opinions, I might be able to insert into my paper. And of course for some mighty good discussions
Edit: Oh, btw. I don't own an E-Book reader yet. Blame my wallet... But I got me a HP Pavilion tx2000 Subnotebook featuring Wacom, WiFi and a convertible screen, somehow giving me the illusion of owning a somewhat heavy E-Book device.