Quote:
Originally Posted by Little.Egret
Look at the used & refurbished prices for Nook or Kindle. They seem to be in the price range you are thinking of but most people go there only for a replacement or spare, not for their first ereader.
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I was thinking of a mass market device that could be sold in retail stores by the thousands (millions?), not a per person one-off. There are lots of great used devices -- Palms, Alphasmarts, used ereaders -- but I am brainstorming about a device that could bring a really cheap ereader to the mass market -- pharmacies and WalMarts, etc.
The book retailers are there -- Smashwords, Weightless, RobotTradingCompany, DriveThruFiction plus freebie sites like ManyBooks, Feedbooks, Gutenburg, Wattpad (if only they allowed downloads).
Readers could buy in Epub and convert to plain text if the device cannot sustain an Epub reader.
I wonder if a simple device like this paired with a solid store -- Smashwords is the largest that comes to mind -- could be the elusive "competitor" for Amazon since B&N, Kobo, Apple, seem to be losing ground if anything.
FJTorres -- actually the $20 ebook reader article brought me back around to this idea -- I had originally kicked it around a couple of years ago thinking of the $25 MP3 players with plain text ebook functions and the simple "feature phones" with card slots (no ebook reader, but most have a web browser, so I assume you could load an HTML ebook on a card and read it in the browser).
My biggest concern is battery life -- most of those Androids phones have, what, 3-6 hours on batteries?
I know my AlphaSmart Dana (running Palm OS) runs 20-30 hours on a set of AAs, the Alphasmart Neos last 200 hours on a set of AAs...that's why I was thinking of a grayscale LCD panel as the reader.
I would think that technology could be applied to an ereader. If Chinese companies can profitably sell these 4" MP3 players for $20-25 (and have been doing so for years), I think the ereaders could also be profitable.