Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Portable library ...

... I write about Sony's e-book, a few glitches yet pretty nifty.

4 comments:

  1. I played with one of these at a Sony store and I have to say I was impressed by the look of the text on the screen. It looked 'soothing' to my eyes, if that makes sense.

    I think you made an error in your article, however: "you can, for instance, download John Sandford's Dark of the Moon or Alan Greenspan's memoir at a modest discount ($21.56 and $28, respectively, versus $17.99 and $20.99 at Amazon for the paper versions)."

    Did you mean to have those prices in reverse? (That the ebooks are slightly cheaper than the physical books?)

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  2. No, the downloaded books were listed at a higher price than the real books on Amazon.

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  3. Wow--that's astounding. Charge more for a less tangible, lower overhead-cost to produce product. *shrug*

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  4. Anonymous4:11 PM

    Nice article, Frank. People at work (well, some of them) are very keen on e-readers. I can't imagine using one, but in view of your article, I'm quite tempted to give one a try. Trouble is, I look at a screen all day and in the evening too, so I'm always pleased to read ink on paper for that reason. I too had noticed how strangely expensive downloadable books are on Amazon -- I can't imagine why unless it is to do with how copyable and transferable they are (you can just email them round to everyone as attachments, I guess?). But I am sure you are right to say that the price needs to be much less than a "proper" book to get people started and to get the technology into general use.

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