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Originally Posted by NatCh
Hmm. Where do you see the fact that reading hardware which most people would consider decent has only very recently come into the world fitting into that paradigm?
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It is clear that reading hardware is improving by leaps and bounds with all these advances in miniaturization, so I think that the e-book market is bound to increase. The way I see it however is that hardware follows content, which then gives rise to more content and so on, and that's the crux of the matter here.
Since there is no easy way to translate your print content to e-form, and let's face it however wonderful Gutenberg and the like are, people mostly want to read new stuff, very few people are going to spend hundreds of dollars on a dedicated device and then oodles more to get that content on, so the adoption rate for e-books will increase slowly no matter how wonderful the new device is
Only a cool multifunction device that easily reads books and many people want would accelerate dramatically that, and even so the issue of how you generate enough revenue from digital content at prices people are going to pay remains.
Who knows what the future will bring, maybe Google will strike a deal with publishers and offer huge amounts of e-books in a way or another, maybe Amazon will do something, maybe One Laptop will come with something for content
There is a huge industry out there with lots of vested interests and e-books have this potential of changing dramatically things, but the external pressure to force the industry to embrace then quickly is just not there at least yet...
Ultimately nothing to do with reading hardware. Were there a magic wand included with your pc that in 10 minutes takes your print book and makes an html or whatever format you want out of it, you would soon see everyone sporting a Sony Reader, Iliad, Bookeen, Ebookwise or whatever