I can understand books you would buy on the shelf, but books already indexed. I am wondering exactly what they mean by that..

Tony

I have high expectations for this case.

Amazon and Google are entering the eBook business this year according to the New York Times.

The new Amazon product and service will be called The Kindle. Google will begin charging users to read the full text of some of the books they have indexed….

From a style perspective, the Sony Reader looks horrid. It needs some spray paint and gloss as it reminds me of the first generation handheld devices.

$200 is the top price point I’d be willing to pay for an e-reader, and that some includes a library of books on the device to start me off.

Most will probably just prefer books. There’s a good article on this, not by me:

http://www.best...kout-for-ebooks

Even at a $50 price point, the incompatible DRM formats of these different ebook systems dooms them to only marginal success. Without wide support for a single ebook standard from both device vendors and publishers, are people really going to spend their annual book budget (probably nearly $1000 in my household) on formats that are tied to a single reader architecture? I doubt it and all the evidence to date of heavily DRM’ed online media initiatives (with the exception of the iTunes/iPod ecosystem) seems to agree. As much as I love Amazon, if the Kindle experience is anything like Amazon Unbox video, it’s going to suck.

They need to do to the moribund book industry what they’ve done for music..

Think about it: we don’t always read to do research. We don’t always read to be looking up more information or what another blogger or our friends on a social network have to say about the book.

We often read for the simple pleasure of reading–of disappearing into another world. And sometimes we want to go to that world as an escape from devices, many of which are part and parcle of our brave new jobs. When it comes to our off-line time, the only “device” some of us really need, or want to use, for reading is a pair of glasses.

As for the key driver of sales–well, that will be the hype factor and whether or not educational institutions force students to use them. The regular old non- cutting edge tech geek, who likes to throw a book in her purse or his briefacase will probably still opt for the regular kind. Portability and convenience are still key drivers of sales–not to mention the ease of browsability. Ever try browsing an e-book? hardly an easy thing.