Thursday, November 19, 2009

The E-Book Reader War



    
     There is a lot of talk (and buying) about the different e-book readers currently on the market. To mention a few there is Amazon’s Kindle, the Sony e-book reader and Barns and Nobel’s Nook. The Nook features two screens, one for reading your book and the other smaller one for viewing in color the book cover. Qualcomm is also introducing a full color reader. Prices are still high for all of the readers and will have to lower to an acceptable level for the common person to afford one. If the e-book reader is the new wave of the future then I believe the price should be affordable for everyone, say a hundred dollars. Every time an e-book is sold and downloaded to a reader the company receives $10 to $13 dollars. I am not sure how much the author receives for each sale but you can guess it is minimal compared to the profit of the companies selling the product.

     Besides the price of an e-book reader dropping what features would you like to see if you purchased one? I will start this off. I would like to be able to hook it to my computer and upload my unpublished manuscript. I would also (as I read it) like to be able to edit it via a small keypad or at least underline the places to edit later. Finally I would like to be able to download it back into my computer. I am looking forward to reading your comments.

2 comments:

  1. You're absolutely right about the cost. It will have to drop considerably for the average Joe to consider buying one.

    I would love to have one, but will not spend that much. I believe that in the future, the price will drop-- just as all electronics do after the novelty wears off.

    Lets just hope its in a timely manner, or who knows there could be something altogether new on the market!

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  2. Hi TK
    Nice comments. The high cost has also kept me from purchasing one. The good news is that there are many different companies producing readers. The cost varies between $399 down to $199. As you mentioned the cost will drop as time passes by.

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