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Originally Posted by Bob Russell
Experts already give four primary reasons why the Sony Reader will be a niche player and not reach the mainstream readers: - The price of $350 is a steep up-front investment when paper books cost nothing up-front.
- There is no backlight
- The e-ink display may be gorgeous, but page turns are slow, and it also restricts the interface functionality.
- The Sony Connect store uses a DRM'd format controlled by Sony, and therefore without a huge discount on books, people will avoid the Reader.
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I've had mine for a little over a week and I'm already into my second book, The Second Confession by Rex Stout. I think the Sony Reader can be successful if its marketed right and if they expand the library of titles. Only 4 of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe series is available while Random House has the entire line available in paperback, conversion should be simple. I emailed Random House asking if they had plans to do this but no response yet.
As for the points above:
2. Backlight, what everyone else has said, its better without it.
3. I've had to adjust to making sure I actually read the very last line before I turn the page, in a real book I read it while I'm turning. But I consider that small potatoes. Reading is the slowest medium and the fact a page turn takes a half-second instead of an 1/8 of a second isn't a problem.
1 and 4 are directly related. Yes there is a cost if you're buying new books but older books actually run a little less than paperbacks. There's also the fact that there are thousands of works of classic literature available for free through Project Gutenberg. Plus, while the PG files work on the reader, you can get them more 'reader friendly', through manybooks.net. There's a major selling point here: Parents with junior high students. If they buy their kid this now thats 8-10 years of free access to all the classical required reading they'll face through high school and college. Another major selling point is the Renaissance. Everyone wants to have that big leatherbound collection of classical works. Few people have the space or funds to have it. Now they can and who knows, they might actually read some it. The only drawback here is hopefuly newer models will let you store really large collections on the device (without a memory stick) and be able to sort it easily.