[garygibsonsf]

I spent a lot of time looking at ebook readers and got a shock when I got round to looking at the ebook market. Here's what I want in a reader: the ability to read ebook sold at a fair/cheap price, by current authors, not just bestsellers. With the majority of ereaders out there you need to jump through hoops because of hardware incompatibilities, text format incompatibilites (so many formats!), and any other number of issues including DRM at the front. Books are the easiest things in the world to read unless you want to read them electronically, in which case any company that sells you one becomes a de facto police state monitoring what you're reading and effectively allowing you to rent a book, not own it, until such time as they either stop providing support for most of those formats, particularly their own.

Until a couple of days ago, I was thinking very seriously about putting down the cash and getting a reader. But if I was going to buy one, and if I was able to use it in the way it was intended, I would get a Kindle. Here's why.

No worries about hardware compatibility. And based on my browsing, a far wider range of books at better prices than anyone else around. I browsed on various names I choose to read - generally cutting-edge science fiction by name and not-so-name authors - and found a hugely greater percentage of them available as Kindle. Not all, but far, far more than elsewhere. I can't speak for any public domain fiction and so forth, but I found most of the stuff in Amazon's kindle library that I want to read just now. Not anywhere else.

Put it this way: who is more likely to win in the ebook reader game - a company with no stake in publishing (Sony) or a company who are probably the biggest bookseller on the planet (Amazon) with a vested interest in getting the printed/electronic word to their customers? And what's going to happen when Sony chuck the towel in?

I still have a box of betamax tapes mouldering somewhere under some boxes in a cupboard somewhere. That, I suspect, is the likely future of the Sony Reader and most of the other formats. Yes, the Kindle is uglier, but the combination of availability of books and ease of use (within the USA, anway) ensure it's very likely to win by a long shot. UNLESS the Sony suddenly starts reading (and being able to download) kindle books.

The Kindle is proprietary, ugly, DRM-riddled, and almost guaranteed to succeed. As long as you're in the USA, but I hope that changes and they don't take too long to spread it around the world.

My advice to anyone in the States - speaking as a disappointed would-be reader owner - is, buy a Kindle. Outside of the USA, wait, unless you've got a lot more cash than I have.