It's been a long time coming, but the e-book has finally crossed into mainstream. BBC
has a story that wraps pretty up everything up we've been talking about in the past few weeks. It talks about forthcoming e-books readers such as the
Sony Reader and the
iRex iLiad, about the benefits of
E Ink technology, the strong demand for
audio books, the
nasty aspects of DRM, and about iTunes-like stores for e-books. Heck, they did such a good job, they even quoted our friend
Nick Hampshire from Afaics Research:
"I think we are talking about a whole new breed of author. New skills, new content, new ideas, new ways of thinking particularly, and this will be quite a wrench for some of them to make that move, but it offers new possibilities. The possibility of being able to create a book that includes audio components, moving image components that includes interactive components is something which to my mind offers enormous possibilities."
Appendum: Check out
this accompaining video (Realvideo) to find out how mobile readers in Japan pass the time with e-books on cellphones (via
Teleread!)