Will Kindle And Other eBook Readers Lose Out To iPad?

A recent survey by ChangeWave Research took a look at over three thousand consumers shortly after the iPad was revealed to the world. They gave special attention to the device’s function as an e-reader or its ability to snatch the sales crown from the Kindle.

A whopping 40% of those looking to bring an e-reader home in the next ninety days chose the iPad. The Kindle comes in second with 28%, Barnes & Noble’s Nook with 6%, and Sony with a miniscule 1%.

I've heard the criticisms and I love both Jeffrey Bezos and Steve Jobs - as to which product will sell better. We shall see when iPad launches next month

The Real Book or The Kindle Book?

Here's a nice entry by Scott Stein I found on CNET. It's about how Kindle ebooks are replacing the physical books - hard bound or soft-cover doesn't really matter. He poses some pretty good arguments on how ebooks are cheaper with the convenience of pocket-size access.

Nevertheless the feel of a book & its pages in your hands, still has the feel of permanence & sentimentality I guess would be a corny description. I still prefer books though but who knows I don't have a Kindle. Maybe if I get one I can actually compare.

eBook Readers are Upgrading Faster than I can say Kindle!

And I thought Amazon wasn't even able to keep up with Kindle demand...

Have you seen the new Kindle 2? I've been behind in the book publishing industry a bit given I've been otherwise indisposed with my new job.

I'm very impressed with how thin it is. Other than that I think it's just upgraded everything - longer battery life, expanded national coverage, more books available, improved ergonomics

My question here though, is when will the next one come out? By the time I can afford this one, it might already be outdated

Here are the new Kindle specs

Slim: Just over 1/3 of an inch, as thin as most magazines
Lightweight: At 10.2 ounces, lighter than a typical paperback
Wireless: 3G wireless lets you download books right from your Kindle, anytime, anywhere; no monthly fees, service plans, or hunting for Wi-Fi hotspots
Books in Under 60 Seconds: Get books delivered in less than 60 seconds; no PC required
Improved Display: Reads like real paper; now boasts 16 shades of gray for clear text and even crisper images
Longer Battery Life: 25% longer battery life; read for days without recharging
More Storage: Take your library with you; holds over 1,500 books
Faster Page Turns: 20% faster page turns
Read-to-Me: With the new Text-to-Speech feature, Kindle can read every book, blog, magazine, and newspaper out loud to you

Large Selection: Over 240,000 books plus U.S. and international newspapers, magazines, and blogs available
Low Book Prices: New York Times Best Sellers and New Releases $9.99, unless marked otherwise

Sony ebook edges on Kindle

Sony ebook reader has expanded its acceptable formats trying to getting an edge on Kindle - which is quite heavily promoted on the biggest online retailer in the world. It's a rather smart move I think, since Kindle is tied to Amazon subscription and purchases, opening up the Sony ebook reader to a more varied audience will give it better coverage instead of only being limited to Sony's ebook store.

The new models coming out next month and those with upgraded firmware will be able to load

• IDPF/EPUB - this is the XML-based standard format proposed by the International Digital Publishing Forum, all the major publishers like Harper Collins, Random House, Simon & Schuster, and Penguin are offering texts in the .epub format
  
• PDF/A files - subset of the Portable Document Format that was designed for the purposes of long-term archival, with all fonts and images embedded into the document
• The device previously supported BBeB (Marlin) Books, PDF, TXT, RTF and Microsoft Word files (converted with Sony's CONNECT software).

This will make the Sony ebook reader a more flexible product

Amazon Launches Paperback Of The Future?

Jeffrey Bezos has been know to be the visionary who set up the multi-billion dollar retailer Amazon.com - he does it yet again with Kindle in the hopes the ebook reader will do for books what the iPod did for music.

In this review by The Guardian's Danny Bradbury, he quoted Jeff Bezos, "we knew we would never out-book the book," he explained. "We would have to take the technology and do things the book could never do."

Kindle has 30 hours of battery life, 2-hour recharge time, it lets users instantly receive newspapers and magazines subscribed to via Amazon. Making more than 90,000 books, blogs, magazines and newspapers available to any reader anywhere in the world - at a fee of course. But will this ebook reader device make it to mass markets? His article mentions many possible flaws to the device.

Other publishers worry that the whole ebook concept is flawed. Like many, HarperCollins is currently in the throes of digitising its content. "We're partly digitising because we are saying that we're not as interested in the book as a content delivery mechanism," says group digital publisher Clive Malcher. "We want to start with the content and deliver it in the most appropriate medium."

In a letter from Jeff Bezos posted on the homepage of Amazon.com, it took them more than 3 years to develop it. Kindle is wireless, patterned after the cell phone technology without the bills, the software and contracts. The screen is nothing like a computer, it's said to be on electronic paper and weighs only 10.3 ounces (less than a paperback), with the content of 200 books.

Will their analogy to music really work? I'm not sure. I still want to hold a book when I read and flip pages, and even smell the paper. It might be worth considering though now that everyone's going green - environmentalists will love this product.

I'm not sure ebooks will fly as well. They have been around for awhile but they haven't really stood out as a replacement for the real tangible book. And I doubt they ever will. For some reason, being published in print is just not the same with being published online