ebooks and ereaders

[charmian]

I've been sort of watching the technological developments in ebook readers via the Teleread blog. Excitingly, they seem to be falling under the $200 price point range. I hope soon, like iPods, they start to break the $100 barrier. I hope soon there are tons of $50 ereaders out there.

One thing which might be interesting is if they integrated this with social networking, to allow you to buy and send ebooks instantaneously to your friends. Possibly they could also offer you a discount for say, buying ten books and sending them to people, or they could somehow incorporate the "book club discount" system into getting people to form large groups dedicated to buying a certain book?

Comments

[franzeska]

You know, this is the first time I've ever actually considered getting one. I hope they do evolve in that direction.

[charmian]

Yeah, prices do seem to be dropping, and they're sort of making experimental steps towards color. But also there are standard wars (on the software level) and competing types of screens.

[myaru]

Interesting article. (Reading it blinded me, but that's another issue.) Personally, I'd prefer a reader to a browser for reading a book, even if the development teams somehow managed to agree on how to render material. Something made for displaying a book layout would be infinitely better - especially if it weighs less than a laptop.

It's funny. Having read Wolfe's first New Sun book in Firefox, I developed definite preferences for e-reading. For instance, I want to be able to turn pages, or mark them, so as not to lose them if something crashes - but doing that in a browser is just a pain.

A book club type discount would be attractive, too. The group reading thing in general would be much easier that way, actually.

[charmian]

Oh yeah, ebook readers definitely weigh less than laptops. Although I think in the near future, laptops will be much lighter, a la the Macbook Air.