Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
It's just a matter of educating people that there are tens of thousands of free books out there - PG, etc. Some people have the strange idea that any out of copyright book is "boring" and not something they want to read. Nothing could be further from the truth.
|
I agree that there are interesting books out there that are free (or very cheap) including lots of classics, but I am not talking about you, me, people here who by and large are voracious readers; there are lots of statistics about why and what people read, and while I would not mind (though publishers may) that the vast majority of people who read several books a year switch from reading the latest VaDinci code or celebrity memoir, to reading Dickens or Suetonius, I profoundly doubt that is going to happen; and let us not forget that more and more alternatives to reading appear all the time...
I really do not see a large market for a dedicated e-reading device at current prices, so I still think that prices are going to drop dramatically, or the dedicated e-readers are going to be marginalized.
For me the best bet for a large market and consequent e-book mainstream acceptance and use, are still multipurpose devices like UMPC's, tablets, iPhone, though they are still expensive and have various other technical issues too.