Kadoth Nodens wrote:What they need to do here is give away scads of free e-books to anyone who purchases one of these. I'm thinking 20 books at least. Amazon would be taking a hit, since that'd be about 5 bucks a title back to the publisher (I think), but I imagine the expanded user base would be worth it in the long run.
$400 bucks probably equals (or exceeds) the yearly book-budget for potential customers in their target demographic. Covince people they're not only getting a gizmo, but a gizmo + all the books they were planning on buying this year, and more people will jump on board.
Hell, load the thing up with public domain classics, too.
Making the New York Times Bestseller List available is a great start. Now expand it to other genres. Hell, as most books printed in the last 30+ years or so are typeset electronically by the publisher (i.e. soft copy already available) it could be very easy. Limit it to out-of-print titles if you're worried about lost sales.
I can see this kind of technology doing an iPod/iTunes with books and if they did, I'd be all over it. I'm a voracious reader and buy all my books. Being able to take 2 weeks worth of books on a trip (10+ titles) would be great!
edit to add:
Holy Sh*t, I see they have! check out the number of books available:
Code: Select all
Fiction (26,451)
Nonfiction (54,101)
Advice & How-to (3,649)
Arts & Entertainment (2,146)
Biographies & Memoirs (2,587)
Business & Investing (8,816)
Children's Chapter Books (1,181)
Computers & Internet (4,576)
Fantasy (1,559)
History (5,577)
Humor (687)
Lifestyle & Home (2,040)
Literary Fiction (1,131)
Mystery & Thrillers (4,066)
Parenting & Families (967)
Politics & Current Events (4,138)
Reference (3,040)
Religion & Spirituality (3,471)
Romance (4,637)
Science (15,989)
Science Fiction (3,006)
Sports (686)
Travel (576)
Magazines are a little meh - especially without a color screen.
Newspapers are also a little light, but it does have the SF Chronicle, which I read most days.
I'm going to do a little browsing of the book selection, but I just may take one for the team to try this holiday season...