E-Readers a hot item this holiday season
If you’re in the market for a wireless e-reader that delivers newspapers as well as books, you will have five models to choose from this holiday season.
Three companies — Sony, iRex and Barnes & Noble — have recently introduced e-readers that they hope will give the Amazon Kindle and Amazon’s online store some serious competition.
Like the Kindle, these new devices will provide wireless access to online stores where you can conveniently purchase and download electronic editions of books and newspapers without involving a personal computer.
Behind the scenes, nearly every major U.S. newspaper publisher is scrambling to get contracts signed and to make its content e-reader-friendly for each vendor. For now, all will display newspapers in a similar one-column eBook format with few images and no advertising.
All of these e-readers are ultra-thin and lightweight with low-power, black-and-white electronic-paper displays. The main differences between the models are in the methods they use for navigating content and in the size of their screens.
You have the opportunity to try out the Sony Daily Edition and iRex DR800SG e-readers at Best Buy stores across the country. Barnes & Noble plans to have its Nook e-reader available to try in Barnes & Noble’s bookstores this month.
Amazon.com deserves credit for kick-starting the U.S. market for e-readers with its launch of the Kindle in November 2007. It has set the standard by which all of the new e-readers will be judged.
Much of the success of the Kindle can be attributed to its effortless wireless connection to the Amazon.com online store and customer accounts. In October, Amazon.com extended the Kindle’s reach internationally by adopting the AT&T Global 3G wireless network.
The list prices for the five e-readers: Amazon Kindle, $259; Amazon Kindle DX, $489; B&N Nook, $259; iRex, $399; Sony Daily Edition, $399.
If you want to get a wireless e-reader before Christmas, Amazon’s Kindles are your only sure bets now. As of Dec. 1, both models — the Kindle 2 and Kindle DX — were in stock and available for next-day shipping according to the Amazon Web site.
Barnes & Noble says pre-orders for its Nook e-reader exceeded expectations. So if you didn’t place your order before Nov. 20, you’re out of luck until sometime in January.
Sony also has announced that due to heavy demand, holiday shipments of its wireless Daily Edition e-reader “cannot be guaranteed.”
(Reprinted with permission from RJI, www.rji.missouri.edu)
Roger Fidler is program director for Digital Publishing at the Reynolds Journalism Institute, located at the Missouri School of Journalism. He can be reached at [email protected]
Additional Buyer’s Guides
www.ereaderbuyersguide.com
Kindle buyer’s guide by Amazon
Portable Ebook Reader Buying Guide by about.com
www.ebookdigitalreader.com/
www.stuff.co.nz/technology/gadgets/2287121/Buyers-guide-to-e-readers
The e-book reader matrix in Wikipedia
E-reader market expanding
The market for eReader devices will expand far beyond the Kindle in 2010 and fragment across many devices, Forrester Research Inc. analysts said in their predications for the next year published in minonline.com. EBook content sales will hit $500 million next year, Forrester analysts Sarah Rotman Epps and James L. McQuivey predicted.
Barnes & Noble is poised to take some of the market share from Amazon and Sony in the device and content sales with the launch of their new Nook reader and an eBookstore, Forrester said.
Magazine and newspaper publishers are also expected to seriously explore alternative devices and modes.
“Magazine and newspaper publishers aren’t satisfied with the way their content looks and acts on the Kindle and Sony Readers — they want color, video, interactivity, the ability to sell ads and control the subscriber relationship,” a Forrester blogpost said. ”Old media move slowly, but in 2010 we’ll see them crawling towards some solutions.”
Epps and McQuivey predict Amazon will launch a new line of touch screen eReaders in 2010 with some form of color device by the year’s end.