Comments on Another Week, Another E-Books Post

I'll wait for the non-buggy version in a couple of years, without the sealed-in battery.

i would much prefer an e-newspaper to an e-book. having a book on disk as a .pdf or .whatever drm you want, isn't the same tactile pleasure as a physical tome on shelves or in your hands

For some reason Neal Stephenson's primer in "The Diamond Age" springs to mind. Speaking of him, I saw on Amazon he has a new book coming out in September.

I agree with @2, I enjoy the tactile pleasure of reading a book. All my bookshelves filled with books make me happy.

From a writer's standpoint, though, it seems like e-books (and the readers to read them on) are a good thing because publishers are more willing to take risks on new or different voices that might not get published otherwise. Or, maybe that's wishful thinking...

@3,

I suspect that any straight-to-reader books would be the literary counterparts of straight-to-DVD movies.

@3 well people wouldn't even need publishers if they could just produce content themselves.

It could lead to greater artistic freedom
but it would probably turn out as chaotic as the the rest of the internet is right now.

my bet is the majority of independent content for e-book readers will be erotic Naruto fan fiction

So this is a portable newspaper? As opposed to what? The non-portable newspaper? What's the point? Sounds like a condom with ink on it.

@6 non-portable e-reader = laptop

You know, it's rare to see an article filled with so much speculation and so few hard facts. I'm impressed.

The concept of e-readers (either book or newspaper sized) holds great promise. But the devil is in the details. How big will it be? How much will it cost? What can you actually read with it? What do subscriptions to magazines/newspapers/books cost? What kind of software does it use? What kind of screen resolution (the Kindle, for example, is about 1/4 the resolution of text printed on a laser printer)? Will it be upgradeable? When will it actually be available to the public? Maybe it'll have color. Maybe it'll have a touch-sensitive screen. Or maybe not.

The article answers none of these questions. So nobody knows whether this new reader will be the coolest thing since sliced bread, or a gigantic technological turd. The article is an exercise in technological navel gazing.

Post again when there is some real information.

The concept of e-readers has held great promise since the 63 Worlds Fair ...

Wow! I've wanted one of those since I saw a guy reading a USA Today on one in Minority Report.