[acastillo]

Although I don't agree with the writer about the joy of "scouring your shelf for the right five books," I do agree that something has to be done to make reading "cool" in order for ereader devices to sell better.

If ereader devices are to become common place, they have to be marketed to more than just persons wanting to read the "classics."

I think the niche to fill is those persons wanting individualized information on devices bigger than a smartphone (whose screens are too small) and smaller than netbook/laptops (devices that are too heavy and take too long to start up).

How about the person wanting to read a personalized newspaper with RSS feeds they select? Or the company that sends the meeting agenda to everyone's ereader? How about the husband who gets the shopping list from his better half on his way home from work? Or the attorney who desperately needs case law in the court room and gets the cases sent to his ereader on the fly by her legal assistant.

I think that an ereader device that can receive and/or store individualized information and display it in a readable, shareable (try showing an news article on your phone to a group of people huddled around the phone) format quickly will become indispensable to the public.

Ereader devices can and need to be advertised as more than just an ebook reader. Heck, I even use mine to store recipes that I use frequently. It sure beats pulling out all the cookbooks just to find the one recipe that I need.