Why E-Book Readers Don't Stand a Chance

Although some people see a reason to buy a device just to read a book, I don’t. Some have said that Amazon’s Kindle is the savior of the e-book market. I don’t believe it. Others say that e-book readers will kill the book-publishing industry and bring it into the 21st century. I think that’s rubbish. The fact of the matter is e-book readers will never have commercial relevance.

Read the rest of this post


comments so far. Add yours.

  • Gerrit Eicker

    Sorry, Don, but you’re wrong. If there would be something you could really call an e-book- (or better: digital media) reader, the market would explode. I’m talking about something similar to a TabletPC but formated to DIN-A5 and less than 800g. Something to read any digital text and to easily write some notes. – E-books have one problem only: missing hardware.

  • http://allthingsd.com/ Michael Long

    You don’t place any value on the benefits, so you just “don’t get it”. Which you said, several times. That’s fine, but then you make the mistake of presuming that your value system holds true for everyone else.

    Or in the immortal words of CmdrTaco, “No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.”

About Voices

This is a section of the AllThingsD Web site featuring posts that have been curated from around the Web: pieces we’ve read, discussions we’ve followed, stuff we like. Five posts are included here each weekday, but only the headline and the first two sentences. We link to the original site for the rest. The section is explicitly labeled, so it’s clear that content comes “from other Web sites.”

We also solicit original full-length posts and accept some unsolicited submissions. Voices is edited by Beth Callaghan.

Dive Into Media

Latest Video

View all videos »

Search »