DominoJun 4th, 2008 - 10:09:00

Perhaps everyone should try not to panic so much about the immediate effects of readers like the Kindle (and there are other readers as well you know, Kindle isn't the only one).

Ebooks are not a replacement for real books, they are just another format to read books in, because some books are just for reading, not for having.

Not everyone will want one, it'll be people who read a lot and want to take 20 books on holiday and still fit some shoes in their case, or know they won't want to re-read a certain book, or teachers who need to carry several textbooks around and so on.

When the Reader takes off, it'll be because children are reading their textbooks on them, but that's a while away yet. What amazes me is the way some bloggers complain about the advent of the ebook as though it's some sort of threat to print books, when eventually it'll bring the book full circle - print books will become genuinely precious objects again because you really wanted to buy and have and keep that book.

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PeterJun 6th, 2008 - 10:05:36

The problem with Amazon's Kindle is that the ebooks are not readable on other devices. The format Kindle is using is based on Mobipocket (www.mobipocket.com) but changed in that way that it only can be used on the Kindle.
If a publishers chooses to publish their ebooks in Mobipocket-format it reaches a sales through hundreds of ebookretailers worldwide and the ebooks can be read on many devices (including Palm, Pocket PC, Blackberry, iLead, Cybook, Smartphones and several other electronic ink based readers then the Kindle. With Mobipocket the publisher can choose its retailers and within this list Amazon is included. If you switch on Amazon as your retailer you have to sign an extra agreement by which you give Amazon all kind of extra permission. Permissions many publishers not realizing it's consequences. One of the consequences is that Aamazon change the format so that it can be used on the Kindle alone.
In return if you arrange the ebook distribution directly through Amazon it will not appear in the Mobipocket store. By this the number of available titels at Aamazon is growing faster and Amazon is able to bind the use of ebooks to their own hardware. This is not in the benefit of the publisher and not in the benefit of the reader. Readers should be independent in the hardware they prefer to read ebooks. Nobody is accepting to watch TV on hardware supplied by the broadcastingcompany alone, being able to watch only the programs of the broadcasting company. Publishers want to have more retailchannels then Amazon.
Amazon owns the majority of the shares of Mobipocket.com. It seems to me they intend to control the ebook market and are building a dominant position towards both publishers as well as consumers.

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