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Originally Posted by Robertb
I am the most avid "pusher" of color bodies for eBook Devices. Unfortunately, management's bean counters find it easier to stick with black and white temporarily. Your email confirms what the women speakers at IDPF said... get devices in color. I agree with the pretty cases penchent too. Maybe fine grained leathers is not enough. We need to dress the cases up a bit further for women. Maybe rhinestones or birthstones might be a possibility. We are working with female publishers to delineate more ideas. SKINS are popular and I want that. There is a fine line between pretty and slightly tacky in accessories. I do not want to go too far and appear overboard but I do want to design for WOMEN as well as men.
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This particular woman cringes when she sees rhinestones ... or lace (it's just itchy!) On the other hand, the first thing I bought when I got my Sony PRS505 was the hot pink leather cover. My co-worker really, really wanted the lime-green cover, but it's only for the 500.
I think it's like just about everything else: people - men and women - like a variety of things. A quick check on Google tells me there have been something like 163 million Ipods sold. So if they want to offer 15 different colors with a multitude of cases and/or holders and/or skins, they have a large enough pool of buyers to do so and still make money.
There's (currently) a much smaller pool of ebook reader buyers. I would expect too much customization would just lead to unsold stock. I think one of the other posters has the best suggestion - elegant, simple design.
Now, if you want to appeal to readers who want something fancier and customizable, I wonder if you couldn't find a crafter company you could work with to make patterns for customizable covers? Cloth, lace, rhinestone - paint-by-number skins? I have no idea how "doable" something like that would be, but I know women who make book covers, scrapbook covers, cell phone carry cases, and so on. And it wouldn't have to be on your inventory!