[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Kilarney

Here are some thoughts from a person who is just an average Joe and not a computer whiz. These are thoughts that I went through when I bought my Sony Reader (today!).

In rough order of concern:

1) In order to purchase an e-ink device, you need to be into books. And therein lies the problem... there aren't many e-books available. I have about 20 books on my Amazon wish-list. I think a grand total of 1 is available as an e-book. If the content isn't there, then what's the point?

There are many ebooks available. They just aren't all that convenient to find and purchase.

I know an author who has work available in electronic editions, and estimated a few years back he'd gotten a couple of hundred dollars in royalties. His publisher was one of those who made it a challenge to discover he had electronic editions, let alone purchase them.

What titles are you looking for? There are other outlets besides Amazon.

2) The competing formats are a real turn off. Even if I can find a book that I'm interested in, there is a good chance that it might be in format other than LRF. I don't relish the idea of using cmd line programs to read something. An E-Reader should make life easier, not harder. I've already decided that PDF files are a total waste of time with the Sony Reader. That's too bad, since there is a ton of content in PDF format.

They are my single biggest complaint. I want to download content once, and read it on whatever device I happen to have.

I sidestep the issue by getting stuff in HTML format, and converting to a form used by an offline HTML viewer on my PDA.

It means I'm limited to what I can get in HTML format, and can't get DRM protected copy, but I don't care. I have more stuff I want to read that can get in that format than I have time to read now, so I'm not missing a lot.

If I could teach myself to read a book with each eye, I might someday be caught up...

3) Price. The IPod is great because carrying around a CD player sucks. People are willing to pay extra in order to store a ton of songs on a device that's better than a CD player. Carrying around a book is easy. So an E-Reader can't command the extra price. (The Sony Card offer put me over the edge.)

I concur. I think we need to see a considerable reduction in the cost of ebook viewers for the practice to really spread.

I really like the idea of selling a physical medium that can be popped into an e-book reader. Why? Because I know that I own it. It's tangible. It's mine. I don't have to worry about servers, etc. These could also be sold at bookstores, so they wouldn't grumble too much to the publishers. How expensive could a 1mb SD card be? People like things that are tangible. It's much easier to get their mind around.

A 1MB SD card would actually be very expensive, as no one currently makes them that small. It would require special production runs, and I can't see anyone doing at.

SD cards are getting steadily larger and cheaper, and you can get 4GB SD cards for under $100, with larger capacities on the way. The cost of the flash media used has dropped steadily, and will drop further, as manufacturers are investing billions in additional fabs to make the stuff, driven by demand from things like iPods and digital cameras.

You can vend single ebooks on SD cards. You'll just have 99% of the space wasted, and it frankly isn't worth the effort to address that. The media is too cheap to care.

I also think that the marketing ploy that has the best chance of success is the environmental argument. Well educated people tend to read. These are people that are likely to be aware of environmental concerns. Imagine having a small media storage device next to a hard-cover with a sign that says: "Save a tree - but me." It think a lot of people would be swayed. Admittedly, the production of a media device has an environmental impact and doesn't use renewable resources, but who said that advertisers had to point that out. ;-)

Bearing in mind that trees are renewable resources, and paper can be recycled...

The trees I want to save are virgin growth. The ones used to make paper are "ranched", so to speak.

And if I really wanted to save trees and was appointed dictator, I'd decree office copiers illegal, and force folks to use only electronic forms of documents.
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Dennis