The publishing industry is crazy. Figure it out here.
The new Sony Readers are awesome, and might actually help tip the scales
Today, Sony held the press conference to announce the two previously rumoured readers, plus a new one.
The first one is a no-brainer. It's $199, 5 inches, and built for portability and to do one thing extremely well: read novels.
The second one sort of suffers from middle-child syndrome: touch screen (which creates glare, which destroys the point of an ebook reader), slightly bigger screen, and bigger memory.
The third, and new one is probably what most people will talk about. It's 7 inches tall, which makes for a unique form factor that sort of looks like a computer monitor in "tall" mode. It's built this way for one purpose: reading newspapers in widescreen. How will that work? Well, this reader is 3G wireless, conveniently with the same deal the Amazon Kindle has with Sprint, only with AT&T. Buy the reader, get free access to the Sony ebook store, which will grow to include magazines and newspapers. It costs $399.
The other announcements at the conference were interesting, if not groundbreaking: The readers now get their own site, instead of being shunted 8-clicks down on Sony's. As well, you can now borrow books from a digital library, which is interesting but I'll reserve comment until I actually try it.
The great thing about the Sony Reader so far has been that it's been available in a ton of countries. This goes to show that the first two readers will be available everywhere, but the last one will be US-only for now. That makes what to buy in Canada a no-brainer; a $200 ultra-portable is definitely the smart choice. However, I'm not sure the $200 model doesn't smoke the $400 anyway. Is it really that big an inconvenience to plug your reader in to get new stuff? I mean, that's what we have to do with our iPods, our cell phones, and our laptops. Why do readers get special treatment? It seems very much like an answer to a question nobody asked. As well, the $400 is much bigger, bigger than the Kindle, bigger than most things people are willing to carry around.
It's a similar argument when you compare the original iPod to the original iPod nano. The nano sold tons and tons more because people liked the price, the portability, and the fact that not everyone owns 30 gigs of music (or wants to carry all of it at once). I'm thinking people will do the same with books.
I'm calling this one now: the $200 Sony Reader is going to sell like gangbusters in tons of countries, and the other two models will likely be discontinued within the next two years, because Sony doesn't want to compete with itself.
And yeah. Totally getting one.
The first one is a no-brainer. It's $199, 5 inches, and built for portability and to do one thing extremely well: read novels.
The second one sort of suffers from middle-child syndrome: touch screen (which creates glare, which destroys the point of an ebook reader), slightly bigger screen, and bigger memory.
The third, and new one is probably what most people will talk about. It's 7 inches tall, which makes for a unique form factor that sort of looks like a computer monitor in "tall" mode. It's built this way for one purpose: reading newspapers in widescreen. How will that work? Well, this reader is 3G wireless, conveniently with the same deal the Amazon Kindle has with Sprint, only with AT&T. Buy the reader, get free access to the Sony ebook store, which will grow to include magazines and newspapers. It costs $399.
The other announcements at the conference were interesting, if not groundbreaking: The readers now get their own site, instead of being shunted 8-clicks down on Sony's. As well, you can now borrow books from a digital library, which is interesting but I'll reserve comment until I actually try it.
The great thing about the Sony Reader so far has been that it's been available in a ton of countries. This goes to show that the first two readers will be available everywhere, but the last one will be US-only for now. That makes what to buy in Canada a no-brainer; a $200 ultra-portable is definitely the smart choice. However, I'm not sure the $200 model doesn't smoke the $400 anyway. Is it really that big an inconvenience to plug your reader in to get new stuff? I mean, that's what we have to do with our iPods, our cell phones, and our laptops. Why do readers get special treatment? It seems very much like an answer to a question nobody asked. As well, the $400 is much bigger, bigger than the Kindle, bigger than most things people are willing to carry around.
It's a similar argument when you compare the original iPod to the original iPod nano. The nano sold tons and tons more because people liked the price, the portability, and the fact that not everyone owns 30 gigs of music (or wants to carry all of it at once). I'm thinking people will do the same with books.
I'm calling this one now: the $200 Sony Reader is going to sell like gangbusters in tons of countries, and the other two models will likely be discontinued within the next two years, because Sony doesn't want to compete with itself.
And yeah. Totally getting one.
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Um, I didn't give too many people presents this year.
But I'll give you guys one.
You don't have to like it though. It's like when I gave my grandma
cashews. She's allergic.
So here's my favorite chapter to write in a very short book
I call "Emma."…
Thanks for the comment, I like tackling heavy subjects. But this one is from personal experience.
Matthew is her crush, I could say. Or her savior. I think I'll put up more. It's not meant to be really long. Just ten short chapters is enough to tell…
This is a pretty heavy topic. The last paragraph definitely has a lot of shocking reveals. What role did Matthew play? There's room for expanding should you choose to revisit this work again.
Congrats on finishing this project.
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