The E-Reader Wars

The e-reader wars have begun. Apples iBook/iPad combo is the media darling, but the rest of the world is rapidly comoditizing in response.. B&N’s nook, Amazon’s Kindle, and Sony’s ‘something’ have all had prices slashed lately. (I would say the name of Sony’s reader except they’d probably require a royalty on the intellectual property.) B&N takes the threat so seriously that they’re basically selling out to the e-future, losing millions to make sure their reader is prominent.

Since I’m paid to be a strategic I.T. person, I see a huge potential for the corporate world. I’d love to use these readers in our various board and committee meetings, which would avoid all that paper and make a more effective meeting. So we’ll be purchasing a demo unit of all the popular readers to see how they would display these documents.

Well, we’ll try all of them except the Kindle. The Kindle doesn’t support the formats we need. It’s basically a one-show pony and only really works with the Amazon store.

Which gets to the first major problem with all these e-readers. They are not conceived and produced as e-readers. They’re primarily e-storefronts for the various companies that make them. There is some notion of an interchangeable product, but it’s still locked down to the whims of the “content providers”.

Media players (iPods, etc) took off because the companies had no choice. People were going to be making mp3′s and playing no matter what. These mp3′s would play on anything that supported the format, and if you wanted to catch that wave you had to make an mp3 player. In this way, Napster set the stage for the iPod.

There is no such analog in the book world. There are not hordes of book lovers loading their paperback collection into book readers. You can download bootleg books, but the majority of folks will be building the collections via purchase…and the occasional Gutenburg freebie.

This will severely curtail the growth of the e-reader market. And you have to wonder how much time they have to capture the imagination of readers. Even with the price cuts, you can buy 15 books and an e-reader….or 30 books. That decision is going to be way too easy for most folks.

And what about libraries? Are you going to be able to borrow an e-copy of a book? Nah, there’s just still too much retail design in the e-reader market. I wonder if anyone has even thought of the corporate document angle?

I do like the Nook so far. I’ll post a full review later after I’ve had a chance to look at the other options. But no matter what people say it’s not going to surpass regular books any time soon.

Meanwhile, I have been going through a couple thousand comics at home. I did this about the time I saw the Marvel comic app for the iPad. Which led to some further thoughts about digital formats…but that’s for another post.