ON AMAZON JOINING THE E-BOOK QUEST

INTO THE FRAY

The long anticipated e-book reader from Amazon will likely be announced this Monday, according to this CNET report:

"On Monday, the online retail giant will unveil its Kindle e-book reader at a high-profile event in New York, an industry source told CNET News.com Thursday. Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos is expected to be present for the announcement, to be held at the chic W Hotel in Union Square.

The Kindle is equipped with a Wi-Fi connection that taps into an Amazon e-book store, which users can access to purchase new electronic books--and Amazon has reportedly signed onto a deal with Sprint for EVDO access.

Additionally, the device comes with a headphone jack for audiobooks, as well as an e-mail address."

The article correctly points out that e-books have yet to see any meaningful market success, despite respectable offerings by Sony and others.

I continue to be optimistic on the category, although I'll be the first to admit that it'll likely be a while more before e-books take off.  One of the most critical drivers is price of the books themselves.

Publishers continue to charge readers the same price for e-books as they do for the printed product.  That'll keep the product a small niche for early adopters and eternal optimists like me.. 

I'll be ordering the Amazon product next week and compare it to my experience over the last year or so with Sony's e-book reader in a future post. 

Comments

[Alex Tolley]

2 good comment threads on Charlie Stross' blog about ebooks. The 2nd is more about DRM. Ebooks fail for 3 reasons:

1. The specialized reader is way too expensive. The reader often only reads proprietary formats, rather than open formats.
2. The books are too expensive given their distribution costs. (your point).
3. DRM violates a basic principle of ownership - the right to sell the product after using it. This, coupled with the inconvenience just kills the potential market.

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/
2007/03/why_the_commercial_ebook
_marke.html#comments

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/
2007/08/why_drm_sucks_redux.html#comments