A Bit More on the Sony Reader

At The Book Depository, Mark Thwaite has a longish post on the Sony Reader. Most of it is a recap of this review, which E.J. wrote about last week.

Mark does make a couple of interesting comments though:

I’d like to question why [Google Books and the Sony Reader] dominate publishers’ thoughts so much. Neither, it seems to me, need necessarily fundamentally alter the publishing business and before either does totally change the way publishers have to work there is a long road to travel.

I tend to agree with this. I don’t think the digital future of publishing is moments away, and I still believe that the book as book will survive, with a plethora of different ideas—instant pod, ebooks, things we have yet to even think of—also existing. Eventually the industry will focus on using technology to figure out the best way of distributing its product—of reaching readers in ways outside of the current distribution model. This will be especially true for books that fall outside of the mainstream, that aren’t best-sellers, that aren’t sold in Wal*Mart.

Although I’m personally resistant to eReaders, it sounds the technology is almost there . . .

I’m about as book mad as they come, and I’m interested in good technology. The Reader isn’t going to change my book reading and book buying habits yet, but it won’t have to improve that much before I start getting very interested.