Wow, quite the flood of discussion. Yvan, I do agree with you about the embedded energy costs in ebook readers, and it's something I gave a lot of thought to before I bought one. I do tend to use the same electronics for extended periods, so I decided when I factored in the embedded energy of
moving the paper around, the ebook reader seemed like a good choice for me.
My daughter was quite indignant to find that most publishers consider her outside the market worth selling ebooks to. But she also wanted to know if her favorite manga, as well as text-based books, are available. Sony Connect has a few, but not so much the ones she wants (she likes shoujo). Mobipocket doesn't seem to have any. Fictionwise has very little. Google turns up this, though:
http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3139112. (There were also links to pages that offered ebooks formatted specifically for the PSP, but these were pretty obviously pirate sites, so I won't post here.) I predicted a while back that the format/device most likely to appeal to kids today was the PSP, Nintendo DS, or iPod video, because so many kids have them, and now we're seeing the reality.
It may turn out that e ink only appeals to those of us who vastly prefer reading to playing video games or watching movies, and are thus willing to buy a dedicated reading device. The next generation may pass us by with ebooks on inexpensive multipurpose handhelds. And if the publishers don't pay attention to these platforms, they could lose this market completely.