Nook wifi only versions to come

If you don't need the iPad video or color display, and you're intrigued ebook readers, keep an eye out for some "lite" versions of existing black-and-white ebook readers. This Wi Fi only Nook from Barnes and Noble may cost only $200. Keep watching for more such less expensive competition to be released by other vendors, including, we hope, Amazon Kindle.

Lots of e-book reader hardware to come

You will be reading more and more hype about e-books this month, in part because of the Consumer Electronics Show and the Apple Tablet, but keep in mind a very interesting (and possible cheaper than Apple) solution: new dual black and white and color screens, such as The Alex Reader, from Spring Designs.

The advantage of a dual-screen reader over the Nook or Kindle is that you can browse the internet or follow URL links at the same time you are reading in black-and-white, which is better for text. You can also have imbedded links to color illustrations, which is essential for professional books.

E book readers

Publishers Weekly (The book industry trade magazine) has announced the wireless e-book reader linked to Barnes & Noble will be for sale at Best Buy next month.

It is a European model using the Verizon 3G network, and unlike Amazon's Kindle, it will read multiple e-book formats, just as the Sony Reader does.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/eNewsletter/CA6698442/2286.html

IREX Unveils New Wireless Digital Reading Device
By Calvin Reid -- Publishers Weekly, 9/23/2009 7:20:00 AMIREX, a European developer of digital reading devices, will today release the details about the new digital reading device it plans to launch in the U.S. market that will allow consumers to wirelessly download e-books as well as newspaper content through a partnership with Barnes & Noble. The device will be unveiled at a roundtable discussion in New York City featuring IREX CEO Hans Broder, B&N.com president William Lynch, Penguin CEO David Shanks and others (including this reporter). The new device has a 8.1” black & white e-ink touchscreen; offers wireless 3G connectivity through the Verizon network and will cost $399. The IREX DR800SG and will be available for sale through Best Buy chain by next month. The new device has been developed to compete directly with the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader devices. Better known in Europe than in the U.S., IREX is entering the U.S. market a bit late. But the company hopes to overcome that disadvantage through its partnership with B&N, the unique size and quality of the touchscreen device and a long history of developing and enhancing e-ink technology. The device will also offer wireless access to more than a 1,000 newspapers through the NewspaperDirect service. The new IREX device has another advantage: it has a Qualcomm Gobi chipset that allows the device to use wireless networks outside of the U.S.—unlike the Kindle or the Sony Reader. IREX is also reportedly planning to offer an affordable color-screen—current color e-ink devices can cost nearly $1,000-- as early as 2011.

Sony E-Reader competiton good for book publishers

Ordering an e-book instantly from Kindle may be fun,

But being able to re-read that e-book on any device is priceless.

Sony’s recent e-book and e-book Reader announcements are the single best news book publishing has had in years. As the NYT article reports below, more books in more formats from more sources is the key to making e-books a viable format in an industry that can still afford to pay writers for writing books:

New York Times 8-13-09
Sony Plans to Adopt Common Format for E-Books By BRAD STONE
To counter Amazon.com, Sony and other device makers as well as several publishers will use the same technology, called ePub, for digital book sales.

…..
“If the business terms and conditions end up being dictated to publishers by one bookseller who has a chokehold over the value chain, publishers are going to have a hard time staying profitable,” said Bill McCoy, general manager for Adobe’s digital publishing business.

It occurred to me the other day that our vocabulary is all wrong in this debate over e-books – in the same way it’s misleading to talk as if America actually had “healthcare, when we really only have very expensive sickcare.

We don’t read e-books or hardcovers. We read what people write.

Books – whether print or digital, whether downloaded or mailed, whether new or old – are just one way that writing reaches the people who want to read it. Books are just one way that people get paid for their writing.

Books are not what I read; they are where I read things that interest me. I find writing in books interesting, because I like writing that reflect the author’s authentic research, originality, and talent. I like the sentences and paragraphs they choose to combine to make a book; I like the way their long story begins and ends.

I think if books are to survive we have to stop thinking about books as a “consumer product.” Format usually follow price, but the quality of what’s inside a book does not.

We need to start thinking about books as a place where writers write and readers find them. If printed books morph into e-books, that’s really not a lot of change.

If we don’t want to lose writing that’s long, and thoughtful, writing that requires time to create – if we want writing we such as we find in War and Peace, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Dreams From My Father, or A Room of One’s Own -- we have to find a way to subsidize the places readers can read what such writers write.

I submit that we could learn how to live without books. It’s reading and writing we can’t live without.

And the possibility of that impending loss is what we should talk about.