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A great read, with plenty of good and succinct points (much of which isn't news around here!). Charlie's description of a book club-type bundling system could well be the best idea for getting e-book readers into adult's hands.
The article doesn't touch on the other potential market for e-books, namely, children. While book club reader bundling may be good for adults, I think we could get children into the habit of reading e-books by creating scholastic bundles of textbooks... essentially to convince parents to buy them their first reader, hopefully to save long-term on the price of expensive textbooks purchased over the next 16-plus years. Hook 'em young, and get their parents on-board. (Of course, this won't happen either if scholastic publishers don't get on-board.)
But as Charlie points out, the raw economics of the e-book reader just aren't great. Though there's nothing wrong with the concept of a reader as general consumer device, maybe the reader must be considered more of a "luxury" device, the high-end single-use version of the general purpose electronic organizer/mobile office/applications device, aka the PDA. And as long as people can read e-books on PCs, PDAs and smartphones, the need for a standalone reader is always going to be limited.
When "need" is limited, you have to sell to "want," through cool factor, economic incentive, or social pressure. I think we'd all agree that the current e-book readers (and, in fact, e-books themselves) have a cool factor for gadget lovers, but absolutely no social pressure or economic incentive. So, until some manufacturer, publisher or partner solves the "want" equation, we will watch the e-book and reader market continue to grow, but very slowly.
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