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"It has dawned on me lately, meditating on the Metro, thoughts silenced so completely that I can hear every page being turned by passengers up and down the car (I am above reading — I am present to myself) that being fully in the moment, all senses turned on, feeling your hands in your lap and the ground under your feet, is a very good way of not being there at all."
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Sales continue to grow (some analysts have pegged Kindle sales at 500,000 units), but e-book readers are still not anywhere near iPod-level penetration of the consumer market. Price is a big part of it.
At $359 for the Kindle, that's a luxury device anyway you look at it. Like most consumer electronic devices, getting below $200 is key to capturing a more mainstream audience. Sony is almost there at $269, but it doesn't have any way of downloading book content wirelessly the way the Kindle does. But there's a free option now too. Last week Google launched a mobile version of its Google Book Search, giving iPhone and Android users access to more than 1.5 million public domain books.The fact that Plastic Logic is honing in on the newspaper business could provide for some interesting possibilities in regard to business models.
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It's a day for e-reader news. Along with Amazon.com's Kindle 2 announcement, competitor Plastic Logic revealed the first partners to distribute content on its eReader when the device becomes commercially available sometime in 2010.
The partners include Ingram Digital, LibreDigital, and Zinio, which has more than 1,000 digital magazine titles currently in its stable. USA Today and the Financial Times have also signed on.
The eReader–which is designed to store dozens or hundreds of business documents on a very thin digital reader–is about the size of an 8.5 inch by 11 inch pad of paper and weighs less than most print magazines, according to Plastic Logic.
As the name of the company might suggest, it's made with plastic, not glass, meaning that it is designed to be strong and to be able to stand up to being hit with objects or, presumably, even dropped. Furthermore, the eReader is an open platform that allows content creators to offer their digital content in their own way.
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Contains the full text of the Hearst memo discussing plans for paid content and e-reader
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"The Kindle may have scored all the press this week, but it's not the only e-book reader. The Sony Reader debuted way back in 2006, and has been quietly chugging along ever since, steadily improving with each edition. I thought it was only fair to take a look at the latest version.
"Sony loaned me its top-of-the-line Reader, the PRS-700 ($400, or $40 more than the Kindle) for testing. Sony still doesn't seem as attractive as the Kindle. First, getting new reading material onto it involves connecting it to a PC (Windows only) with a cable–a ritual that feels extremely ancient and creaky once you've tasted the bliss of the Kindle's instant cellular downloads. Second, Sony's bookstore is priced higher and contains far fewer titles
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"Ambitious it may be, but Hearst is battling big odds, says Forrester analyst James McQuivey. "My basic assessment of their chances is not good," he says. "Hearst doesn't have the tech credibility or relationships to make this a successful venture.
"Hearst Interactive's Bronfin already sits on the board of directors for E Ink, the company whose screens power both the Kindle and Sony Reader. That means an E Ink screen is a near certainty for the Hearst e-reader. However, if Hearst plans to launch an e-reader this year it is likely the screen will be black and white, rather than color.
"Hearst is hoping its e-reader will meet a different fate. But McQuivey states that a device that debuts with a black and white screen would be a deal killer for many of the company's subscribers.
"Periodicals are just not effective in black and white," McQuivey says. "People who buy Esquire or Harper's Bazaar buy them because they want to see the magazine in color."
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"It's unclear if the device Hearst has been working on has anything to do with the eReader that Plastic Logic unveiled recently, but its principle seems the same. It's a handheld device used to read digital content, much like the Kindle. The main difference would be that Hearst's e-reader has a much larger size to accommodate the format of newspapers and magazines.
"At the same time as it is developing the device, Hearst is hoping for success in charging for access to at least some of its online content. A pay model for online content, as opposed to an advertising-supported free-access model, is something few publishers have managed to pull off."
