I think you guys should put together your own ebook overview. It’s still a bit much for a newbie to take in all the formats, drms, ereaders, and mobile ereader choices…

I think your summary could be quite helpful and -you know- not cost $80.

Personally, I was ikindle sold until the whole fiasco hit. (I’m more concerned by the you can only download our books so many times policy than the one off title deletion) Now I’m back to looking between stanza, ereader, and ikindle.

I don’t think you have to consume that many books to value ebooks – tho I would agree that most ebook readers are at least in the book a month club. I do think I read more/faster since I made switch bc my books are always with me (iphone) while the paper back always seems to be on the other side of the house.

I have a different take on “best sellers”. I think you need them because they are expected. I think you switch to an ereader format if you can find all/most of your current “to read” pile… but I think you would be shocked/reconsider a platform if you went to grab that book everyone’s talking about and found it missing.

The folks who make bestsellers by buying them typically buy 2-6 titles a year for holiday reading; that’s why they’re bestsellers, they reach a mass market that most midlist titles don’t even scratch. But the casual bestseller reader *won’t* spend hundreds of dollars on an ebook reader they’ll only read a couple of books on. Why should they? They can buy the bestsellers discounted to 40% off list in Walmart and give them away afterwards.

The ebook reader buyers are in contrast enthusiasts who read 50-100 books a year and have a use for a gadget that lets them squish half a bookcase into their pocket so they can carry it around with them. These folks may read some bestselling titles — but the majority of their intake is drawn precisely from the stuff that *doesn’t* make the bestseller lists.

Content is indeed king, but my theory (as a full-time bill-paying novelist) is that the ebook reader manufacturers have fundamentally got the wrong target by going after fiction consumers. Professionals and technical personnel (including students) who require large reference documentation sets that are updated frequently are a much more lucrative market; add annotations and these groups will happily pay $1000-10,000 a year for an ebook reader loaded and updated with their reference bookcase. Doctors, engineers, lawyers, students — that’s the target they should be aiming for. But instead Sony and Amazon are aiming at the poolside set. It’s like trying to market mainframes to motorbike enthusiasts in 1960 — so wrong-headed it doesn’t even compute.

I’ve been an avid e-book reader for many years, first starting on black and white Handspring visor Deluxe. I’ve encountered many MANY problems with trying to consume legal ebooks. Some being:
-Reader software bloat (Adobe on a 33Mhz CPU is pain)
-DRM version incompatibility (sorry, new DRM doesn’t work on your device
-Differing price for different formats (Mobi is $3.25, MS Lit is $4.50, Adobe is 5.25)
-Unavailabilty of certain titles (JK Rowling doesn’t belive in ebooks, so no legal digital Harry Potter)
-DRM servers going down (I purchased a book from a DRM store and tried to load it onto a different device a year later. No dice, they were out of business and their activation server was down for good)
-No legal right of first sale (I can’t give you my ebook when I’m done with it. I can’t sell it legally).

Ebooks are being killed by the companies that just want more money than they get for print.

In this case the removal of the title from the previous owner’s Kindle wouldn’t create an out cry. :-)

Perhaps an e-ink book that would contain the info of one book, but be choose the size of your book (ei. sheet of paper), but the price of a paper book.
You take it back and reload another book onto it. If you want multiple books, you could buy multiple sheets. Waterproof, shock proof, no batteries etc…