[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by exo

the kindle only has a 6 inch diagonal screen? how could this be? even a mass market paperback has a diagonal of 8 inches. trade paperbacks have a diagonal of 9.5 inches. so is it possible that people can read on the kindle?

I checked my Sony Reader (a PRS-505) and the screen measures 6 inches diagonally (3.5 inches wide by 4.75 inches high) and I find it very readable. One factor to consider is not just the screen size but also the text area size.

I took several handy standard paperback books (romance novels) and measured the text area (disregarding the header and footer). The text area for all of them worked out to (approximately) 3.25 inches by 5.5 inches, or about 6.25 inches diagonally.

A factor that enhances the readability of ebooks is that you can increase the size of the text. One thing I noticed is the size of the print in the books I checked and it is about 11 points. For me it is readable, but I'd prefer it to be a bit larger (I format my own ebooks with a base font size of 14 points). With printed books you are basically stuck with the text size that you get, but with ebooks increasing the font size is easy.