Toshiba's Upcoming "Book Place" eBook Store

From Ubergizmo:

The eBook market is a pretty interesting one at the moment, so it's not too surprising to see that Toshiba has put up a teaser page for its upcoming eBook store, dubbed the Toshiba Book Place. The software will ship preloaded on the company's notebooks, and will be bundled with a sample collection of free books. Toshiba's portal will be based on the Blio platform, which will allow users to read full-color content, either in a book view, or in text-only mode. Other features include the option to add text or voice notes, adjusting reading speed, font size, language translation, and narration. Toshiba has yet to announce a specific date for the launch of Book Place ...

Check Lydia Dishman's Smart Analysis Re: The Google Editions/Indie Bookstore Thing

Find it on the BNET Media Blog.

July 7th - Kindle DX Gets Cheaper and (Please God) Better

From Mobility Site:

While this may be a little bit removed from the real battle going on between iPads, Kindles and Nooks for hearts, minds and reading habits, it does show that Amazon is not holding back anything. The beleaguered Kindle DX, the 9 inch ebook reader despised by almost every college student who has tasted it, is changing colors and prices.

Shipping as of July 7th, the price for a new Kindle DX will fall by nearly $100, to $379 from $489. It also now comes in a hep new color (do college kids still say “hep”?), graphite (which looks more like charcoal to me), but for US models only and is touting better screen contrast. ...

Amazon 70% (Approx.) Kindle Royalty Kicks in Today For Those Who Want to Play by New Rules

In January they said it was coming. Now it is here. Good news for self-publishing authors and small presses - certainly one of the things I have been planning on and waiting for. AP:

The offer comes with conditions aimed at keeping book prices low for consumers, a step Amazon hopes will allow it to remain on top of the growing e-book market against rival stores like the one rolled out by iPad maker Apple Inc.

To get the better rate, authors and publishers have to meet various criteria. The book's list price must fall between $2.99 and $9.99 and be at least 20 percent less than the lowest price of the physical edition. Some major book publishers have demanded that Amazon allow them to raise prices on e-editions to as much as $14.99.

Under the new royalty offer, books also have to sell on Amazon for the same price, or less, than they do with competing book sellers. And they have to be available everywhere the author or publisher has intellectual property rights.

The 70% is net of delivery costs. Financial Post:

Delivery costs are based on file size, and pricing is set at $0.15/MB. At today’s median DTP file size of 368KB, delivery costs would be less than $0.06 per unit sold. For example, on an $8.99 book an author would make $3.15 with the standard option and $6.25 with the new 70 percent option. This new option, first announced in January 2010, will be in addition to and will not replace the existing DTP standard royalty option.

In addition to the 70 percent royalty option, Amazon also announced improvements in DTP such as a more intuitive “Bookshelf” feature and a simplified two-step process for publishing. These features make it more convenient for authors and publishers to publish using DTP.

Google Editions Marriage with Indie Bookstores?

Pardon my cynicism. From NYTimes.com:

Google is on the verge of completing a deal with the American Booksellers Association, the trade group for independent bookstores, to make Google Editions the primary source of e-books on the Web sites of hundreds of independent booksellers around the country, according to representatives of Google and the association.

The partnership could help beloved bookstores like Powell’s Books in Portland, Ore.; Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park, Calif.; and St. Mark’s Bookshop in New York. To court the growing audience of people who prefer reading on screens rather than paper, these small stores have until now been forced to compete against the likes of Amazon, Apple and Sony.

The Google deal could give them a foothold in this fast-growing market and help them keep devoted customers from migrating elsewhere.

“Google has shown a real interest in our market,” said Len Vlahos, chief operating officer of the booksellers association, which has over 1,400 member bookstores. “For a lot of reasons, it’s a very good fit.” ...

As a wholesaler, Google will play a role similar to that of offline distributors like Ingram Book and Baker & Taylor, which buy books from publishers and resell them to bookstores. Those companies generally keep a single-digit percentage of each sale, ... Google would operate along similar lines.

Independent bookstores seem to believe that Google is more interested in working through them than being a direct retailer. In fact, they are banking on it.

But ...

[Darin Sennett, the director of Web development at Powell’s] acknowledged that Google would also be a competitor, since it would also sell books from its Web site. But he seemed to believe that Google would favor its smaller partners.

“I don’t see Google directly working to undermine or outsell their retail partners,” he said. “I doubt they are going to be editorially recommending books and making choices about what people should read, which is what bookstores do.”

He added, “I wonder how naïve that is at this point. We’ll have to see.”...

Yeah. We'll have to wait and see.

Full-Color Kindle for Christmas?

Adam Hartley of TechRadar UK spreads the rumor:

There are rumors that Amazon may be readying to release a full color Kindle e-reader in time for Christmas, following a Mirasol screen tech product demo this week.

At a product demo at Qualcomm in San Diego – Mirasol's parent company – the company's Marketing Director, Cheryl Goodman, confirmed that contracts have been signed and that the new colour screen technology would be in 5.7 inch e-readers later in 2010. ...

Mirasol's screens are able to run video content, and require a minuscule 1mW of power to run. In comparison, it takes 100 milliwatts to power an equivalent AMOLED screen. ...

"Activity will come from the e-reader sector first," said Cheryl Goodman ... . "We are working towards the end of the year, beginning of next, and with multiple vendors."

When asked directly about future plans for the Amazon Kindle, Goodman declined to answer, telling Pocket-lint, "multiple deals are in the queue."

Kobo eBook App Updated for iOS 4

Pretty straightforward. iPodNN tells the tale - retina display compatibility, etc.

LibreDigital Acquires Symtio Platform From Zondervan (Harper Collins)

From Dianna Dilworth at eBookNewser:

Digital distribution company LibreDigital has acquired the Symtio e-commerce platform from Zondervan, a HarperCollins company. ...

LibreDigital was one of the first big players to handle conversion, warehousing and distribution for eBooks and was endorsed by Apple as a "Certified eBook Aggregator" for the iPad back in April.

Adding the Symtio platform will give LibreDigital e-commerce capabilities and the ability to sell eBooks, audiobooks music and video online. ..

As part of the acquisition LibreDigital is adding the Symtio e-commerce technology, existing e-commerce contracts and applications, as well as some e-commerce staff.

This could give LibreDigital a good position in the digital distribution business. In a press release, Brian Murray, President/CEO of HarperCollins Publishers said, "LibreDigital is well-positioned to become the de-facto standard for publishers seeking to increase sales across new and existing digital marketplaces." ...

Great FORTUNE Interview with Jeff Bezos on eBooks, etc.

From Fortune Tech:

Bezos: I think the definition of a book is changing. It's getting more convenient. Now you can get a book in less than 60 seconds.

But in some ways, books are also staying exactly the same. The whole narrative isn't changing. The book is not really the container for the book. The book itself is the narrative. It's the thing that people create.

There's another way that it's not changing, and that's that the book -- the physical book -- is designed to disappear and get out of the way so you can enter the author's world. So when you're reading a physical paper book, you're not thinking about the ink and the glue and the stitching. All of those things vanish so you can focus on the author's words. The Kindle's designed to be the same so when you're reading, the whole device vanishes, so that you're left with the author's world.

Kindle for Android: Smartphones Today, Tablets Tomorrow

Jason Perlow on ZDNet:

Today, Amazon released its highly anticipated Kindle e-book reader software for Android devices, which gives Google’s smartphone and MID operating system immediate legitimacy as an e-Reading platform. ...

This opens the possibility to the Kindle for Android software being used on full-size and mid-size tablet devices, such as the DELL Streak and other devices which are due in the fall of 2010, which should sell between $199-$299 and will compete aggressively with the Apple iPad as well as with dedicated e-Reader devices.

Forbes: Amazon Could Earn $800+ million in 2010 from eBooks Sold to Kindle Owners

The report is authored by Forbes's Trefis Team:

According to research done by Foner Books, Amazon could be selling around 24 eBooks per Kindle per year. If we consider about 3 million Kindle units in use in 2010, Amazon could sell 72 million eBooks for 2010. If we consider the average pricing to be around $12 per eBook, Amazon could be earning $864 million in 2010 from eBooks alone that are distributed on the Kindle device.

The upside can be even greater if Amazon succeeds in becoming the eBook store of preference on the iPhone (50+ million sold), iPad (3+ million units sold) and Android-based smartphones / tablets, although the number of eBooks downloaded per device is likely to be lower for such devices.

If current trends continue, there will be more than 100 million iPhone, iPad and Android-devices in use within the next 1-2 years. Even if each device were to download only one eBook through the Kindle store annually (at $12 a piece), that would imply $1.2 billion of Amazon sales from non-Kindle devices. ...

Barnes & Noble Fiscal 2010 Fourth Quarter and Full-Year Results

From MarketWatch. The year-end numbers are, of course, interesting, but I find the guidance for 2011 even more so:

"We are pleased that in the fourth quarter each of our three channels of business have all gained significant share: physical bookstores, digital books and books sold online at bn.com. In fact, in just a brief 12 months since we launched the Barnes and Noble ebookstore, our share of the digital market already exceeds our share of the retail book market," said William Lynch, chief executive officer of Barnes & Noble, Inc. "In light of the exciting digital opportunity before us, we are planning to redirect a significant portion of our financial resources towards investments in technology, sales and marketing. These investments will impact our bottom line in 2011, but we believe they will enable Barnes & Noble to capitalize on the significant mid-to-long-term growth opportunities presented by the digital markets." ...

"'The explosive growth of digital books has created the most compelling opportunity in Barnes & Noble's history,' said Leonard Riggio, chairman of Barnes & Noble, Inc. 'We have found that Barnes & Noble Members, our best customers, have increased their combined physical and digital spend with us by 17 percent since purchasing a NOOK(TM), and by a phenomenal 70 percent in total units. Based on our assessment of the future digital landscape, I am confident that we have the right strategy and management team to drive Barnes & Noble's next phase of growth and development.'"

Agent Andrew Wylie Puts All eBook Rights Negotiations on Hold

Powerful literary agent Andrew Wylie, longtime terror of editors at major publishing houses, stays true to form - intent on wrestling the very best 21st century terms for his clients. And he is quite right to do so. That's his job. This comes from Bookseller.com:

In an interview with Harvard Magazine, Wylie said the agency’s negotiations with publishers on e-books were currently on hold across the board.

“We will take our 700 clients, see what rights are not allocated to publishers, and establish a company on their behalf to license those e-book rights directly to someone like Google, Amazon.com or Apple. It would be another business, set up on parallel tracks to the frontlist book business,” Wylie said.

Such a "heretical strategy" would likely meet with stiff resistance from publishing houses, the piece notes in response. The Wylie Agency’s stellar list includes authors Martin Amis, Philip Roth and Salman Rushdie, as well as the estates of giants including Italo Calvino, Arthur Miller, Vladimir Nabokov and John Updike.

Wylie also takes issue with the deals publishers are making with Apple, which he says are similar to those entered into by music publishers. "The music industry did itself in by taking its profitability and allocating it to device holders. Manufacturing and distribution accounted for roughly 30 percent of the music industry’s profit. These were conveyed to Apple in the deal for iTunes. But why should someone who makes a machine—the iPod, which is the contemporary equivalent of a jukebox—take all the profit?"

Stocks: Amazon Downgraded on eBook Rivalry Concerns

From Dan Gallagher at MarketWatch:

Marianne Wolk of Susquehanna downgraded Amazon (AMZN 119.13, -1.87, -1.55%) to a neutral rating on Monday. In a note to clients, the analyst cited "intensifying competition" in the e-book market that is creating more uncertainty around the company's Kindle business. ...

"With moves pending by Apple and Google, rising competition is raising the uncertainty regarding eReader, eBook, and Book profit growth rates, capping the contribution to Amazon's valuation from these sectors," Wolk wrote. ...

Wolk said she estimates that the e-book business -- both devices and content -- will contribute about 6% of Amazon's total revenue by 2014. She believes that e-books and physical book sales account for between 8%-13% of the company's valuation, which leaves the shares exposed as competition mounts in the sector.

"With news flow likely to raise uncertainty over the next 12 months, it is likely to reduce the multiples attached to the contribution from the Kindle and importantly lower the valuation on physical books, which should see slowing growth as eBooks accelerate," she wrote. ...

Wolke also noted the way the industry's gradual adoption of the Agency Model is likely to impact Amazon's bottom line.

Kindle iPad App Gets Audio and Video, Plus New Amazon Emphasis on Reader Software Over Hardware?

The italics are mine. This report by Paul Lamkin for Pocket-lint:

Amazon has released an update to its Kindle apps for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad that allows for the embedding of audio and video features within its eBook titles.

Now, not only is this a rather nifty little feature, it also raises two very significant points. Firstly, that the Kindle app can surely now claim to be the best eBook reader available in the App Store, even trumping Apple's very own iBooks.

And secondly it shows that Amazon considers the Kindle to be a significant brand, rather than just a hardware product. After all, the Kindle eBook readers themselves are not capable of these multimedia features (or even color for that matter) and so it demonstrates that Amazon may well be prepared to let its hardware take a back seat as its software makes inroads into the app market.

The first books that take advantage of the new functionality are Rick Steves' London and Together We Cannot Fail by Terry Golway. ...

Also note this from MobilitySite. Once again, italics are mine:

Adding video/audio to ebooks certainly steals a march on iBooks. Of course, such tech has been the basis for Vooks for nearly a year now. The ability to open ebooks with video or audio INSIDE a reader and not as a separate app is new however, and has it’s advantages and disadvantages. I am fascinated that Amazon is targeting this ONLY at Apple products. I wonder if they will be updating their PC or Blackberry software to also display Kindle Editions, and if it will be included in their upcoming Android software? Personally, I have a feeling they may keep it focused at Apple, at least for the short term.

Ten Commandments for Publishers

This from Mike Shatzkin and Joe Esposito:

1. Thou shalt regard thy former competitor as thy future collaborator.

2. Thou shalt let no intermediary stop you from knowing your customer, nor stop your customer from knowing you.

3. Thou shalt publish no book intended for an audience outside your spheres of direct influence.

4. Thou shalt read Dr. Faustus in all its editions–Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple, and Google–and know that Mephistopheles always appears first as a helpmate.

5. Thou shalt not forsake thine own brand.

6. Thou shalt create new brands and master the power and importance of brands.

7. Thou shalt respect and value thy communities with the same devotion thou hath always given to copyrights.

8. Thou shalt recognize that metadata is everywhere and associating it meaningfully is thy job.

9. Thou shalt not fail to test a new marketing channel in order to protect an old one.

10. Thou shalt deliver thy content in every imaginable form that thy customers request or might require.

Indie Lit Experiment: Sometimes That Happens With Chicken

Indie author and publisher Wanda Shapiro is giving her novel Sometimes That Happens with Chicken away as a downloadable PDF, and selling the self-published paperback, ala indie musicians and also such writers as Cory Doctorow, using a model of the type I blogged about here. Check out Wanda's book and her concept.

Brilliant Essay by Craig Mod Concerning eBook Page Design

Find it here.

It's a rainy Sunday afternoon and I'm sitting in a cafe in central Tokyo, desperately trying to enjoy a book on my iPad. Distractions abound: sloppy typography, misspelt words, confusing page breaks, widows, orphans, broken tables. These and more pull me from the narrative spell. In that moment I realize, although I've had this substantial object of glass and metal for a few weeks, I haven't managed more than ten pages of anything.

What, then, is the problem?

It's not the screen — I've happily read several novels on my iPhone.

It's not the weight — it feels fine when resting on a table or my knee.

The problem is much simpler: iBooks and Kindle.app are incompetent e-readers. They get in the way of the reading experience and treat digital books like poorly typeset PDFs.

We can do better. ...

Somebody Blow "Taps" for the Borders Kobo e-Reader

I've been forecasting the still-birth of the Borders Kobo e-Reader for some time now, primarily given its lack of not only 3G, but WiFi as well. And last week its sole major distinction - that of being the cheapest Reader on the market - went out the window when Nook WiFi emerged - competitively priced, WITH WiFi, and also of course with the very nice Nook ergonomics. This from PC World yesterday:

Awkward Buttons

The Kobo has a bright blue navigational pad, which happens to be the e-reader's most awkward feature. ITWire wrote, "Eventually, after more than an hour of reading time, your hand and fingers will start to ache due to repetitive strain from pressing the button hundreds of times."

PCWorld agreed: "... the buttons still provide enough resistance that my hands fatigued after using them for more than a 15-minute block of time."

No 3G or Wi-Fi is a Bummer

It's fine that the Kobo doesn't have all the fancy features of its competition, but without 3G or Wi-Fi connectivity, the Kobo immediately presents itself as something circa 1994.

Wirelessly connecting to and downloading from an e-bookstore has become an essential feature since other e-readers sport that capability. As it stands, if you want to download from the Kobo e-bookstore, or Borders' upcoming e-bookstore, you need to do so with a computer and the mini-USB cable. Sony's e-reader made the same mistake.

Sure, there's an app for the Kobo, but that requires either Bluetooth syncing or a sync via your PC. Plus, as ZDNet points out, you can't choose what books you'd like in your library -- the Kobo syncs them all.

The Verdict

When "competent" and "decent" are the best adjectives you can get in a review, you're in trouble. The only way I can see the Kobo surviving the battle of the e-readers is if the price is lowered by at least $50. That way its barebones makeup would be justified by its price.

The price cut suggested would put the retail tag of the Kobo well below manufacturing cost, so I don't see that happening.

Simon & Schuster's Jonathan Karp Leverages eBook Technology & Backlist Prose to Address the Topic of Generals and the Presidents Who Fire Them

Sequence: President Obama fires McChrystal. Then pundits compare the event to Truman firing MacCarthur. Next Jonathan Karp, newly ensconced at Simon & Schuster, smells an opportunity to leverage the efficiencies of eBook publication, catering to the immediate, but likely brief, public interest in this topic. Karp grabs relevant prose from a sleepy S&S backlist title, David McCullough's bio of Truman, and revs it into a short but immediately relevant eBook. We'll be seeing more of this type of thing.

eBook Royalties - New Street Communications, LLC

After studying the matter quite carefully, I've decided New Street will follow the royalty model that seems to have become the standard for Jane Friedman's Open Road Media. We'll pay authors 50% of net profits, generally with no advance. We'll report every six months. And we'll hold no reserve against returns for amounts payable because (in less than five words) eBooks don't get returned.

Bottom Line: Pandigital's "Novel" Will Be - In Fact, Already IS - Dead on Arrival

Endgadget's Joanna Stern seems not impressed at all. To this I'll add the simple fact that for the same money readers can get the Nook WiFi. Stern:

Sure, Pandigital's Novel may be delayed until next month because of some firmware issues -- and we haven't heard the most positive things about the 7-inch LCD based e-reader / tablet -- but we had to check it out for ourselves. At $149, the all-plastic reader isn't going to win any build quality awards (it's also rather heavy for what it is), but the Android 2.1-powered gadget does have a pretty attractive user interface. In use, however, the resistive screen had to be pressed quite firmly to make selections and the software was noticeably sluggish. Surprisingly, the device did play a standard definition video smoothly and it has an accelerometer -- which is more than the Archos 7 Home Tablet can brag. Barnes & Noble's Android app will be preloaded, and it also has a skinned Android browser of some sort. ... you've got the picture here: the Novel isn't what we'd call novel, you just get what you pay for.

Google Foe Antoine Gallimard Elected President of the French Publishers Association (Syndicat National de l’Edition, SNE)

Read about it at Bookseller.com.

[Gallimard's] priorities for the SNE include an agreement for digitizing out-of-print titles, but despite political pressure "let us not confuse speed with rushing," and "allow technical and financial reasons to interfere with the aim of including French 20th century heritage in digital libraries and thwarting the worrying ambitions of Google Books."

He called for more dialogue with booksellers at a time when "a few major players want to control our pricing policies in order to impose their vertical integration model," and for VAT on ebooks to be reduced from 19.6% to the 5.5% levied on print.

Gallimard, who took over as SNE chief from Serge Eyrolles, welcomed the recent industry-wide agreement to achieve interoperability of the various ebook distributors. "We must overcome divisions and form ties between the profession’s structures," he said.

But interoperability was not enough for former culture minister Jacques Toubon. "Publishers should get together to create a single distribution platform," to compete with the search engines and other powerful groups, he told The Bookseller.

Apple - Typographical Fashionistas

With iBooks, Apple says, basically, it's our fonts or no fonts. From the elves at ThinQ:

Designers of ebooks are starting to grumble about Apple's policy of locking down which fonts can be used on its iBooks platform.

Apparently iBooks 1.1 won't recognize fonts applied with standard CSS to any body, p, div, or span element.

Apple's guidelines say that designers choosing their own fonts would lead to "a bad user experience," a claim which some are calling shortsighted.

Liz Castro from the enigmatically-named Pigs, Gourds and Wikis says that Apple is messing with the ePub standards it purports to support and tells the Cupertino company: "Your desire for control will ultimately break these standards or it will break iBooks. It will break standards as it incites designers to use ugly hacks to overcome iBooks' broken support for standards. It will break iBooks as people design beautiful standards-compliant ebooks that look great in other readers ...

On the other hand, too many font options will make for chaos across the boards in eBooks publishing, if we are not careful. Perhaps Apple is on to something, although they lose points - as usual - for their heavy-handedness.

Follow This Blog Via Twitter

Effective immediately, another way to follow this blog will be through tweets, this in addition to the e-mail subscription and RSS feed already on offer.

Good Detailing of Nook Wi-Fi Specs by Angela Pollock (Helium)

Check this for all the minutiae. Core info:

The NOOK Wi-Fi, priced at $149, weighs about 11.6 ounces and has a white back panel. Also available is the 3G NOOK Wi-Fi for $199. The 3G+Wi-Fi has a gray back panel and weighs a touch more – 12.1 ounces. The back panels on both can be interchanged with others available through Barnes & Noble.

The 3G NOOK will connect free anywhere via 3G plus Wi-Fi. The size averages – 7.7” x 4.9” x .5”. The 2GB of storage will hold about 1500 eBooks but also has an expandable microSD slot. It will works as an MP3 player so you can listen to your music or audiobooks. The NOOK will hold approximately 26 hours of audio. The rechargeable battery will last about 10 hours when not using the Wi-Fi.

Kindle App Update for iPhone iOS4 - And the Illusion of eReader Hardware Wars

These hardware price wars are, in the long run, something of a joke. Amazon and B&N are both in the business of selling books, regardless of what platform they are read on. Thus we are given all of these great cross-platform apps, including the latest update from Amazon.

Politics & Prose Bookstore (Amazingly) Finds Interested Buyers

Given the transitional state of the current publishing/bookselling environment, not many would think it wise to invest new money in any brick-and-mortar operation, not even the venerable Politics & Prose of Washington DC. Per Examiner.com:

The sale of Politics and Prose is yet another indication that the recent climate has become increasingly hostile to independent bookstores. Over the past six years, the Washington DC area has seen popular stores like Olsson’s, Reprint Book Shop, Sisterspace, Karibu, and Vertigo Books close their doors. Even the very chain stores that have played such a role in the demise of the independents have had their own share of problems ...

Washington Business Journal editor Douglas Fruehling delivers a similar analysis:

Although there's no indication Politics & Prose will close — presumably it could if a buyer isn't found or the right price is not achieved — it's the latest chapter in the sad story of the ever-changing publishing industry. D.C. has already lost several home-grown bookstores: Olsson's, Franz Bader Bookstore and Trover's.

The owners of Politics & Prose, which was often featured on C-SPAN, say they have been selling about $3 million in hardcover books in recent years and have 60 employees. That's not chump change, of course, but with more and more iPads and Kindles hitting the market, you have to wonder how long they can keep those sales up. Or how long it will be before Politics & Prose goes the way of our city's other great institutions: Woodward & Lothrop, Nathan's and Commander Salamander.

But buyers there seem to be ... including Jeffrey Goldberg and friends.

Jason Perlow: Nook, Kindle and Other Dedicated eReaders Headed the Way of the Dinosaur

Writing on ZDNet, Jason Perlow foretells the mass extinction of the dedicated, unitasking eReader as a class of hardware, with the long-term market moving to the iPad, etc. and also inexpensive Android devices. A very interesting and informed analysis, which starts with a reference to this week's price-slashes for Kindles and Nooks:

Where is that bottom? I don’t know exactly, but I can tell you that it is very close to device manufacturing cost, which is somewhere between $90 and $125.

And unfortunately, Amazon and Barnes & Noble will be unable to sustain a business on the devices when it hits that low, because the price of the most important and expensive component of those Black & White e-ink readers, the Vizplex display, is controlled by a company that exclusively manufactures and owns the rights to the electrophoretic technology used in these devices, E Ink Corporation.

The “give away the razors and sell the blades” model doesn’t work with dedicated e-book readers because Amazon and Barnes & Noble’s customer base is increasingly becoming iPad and iPhone users, and shortly will also be Android phone and tablet users.

In which case, there’s no reason to sell “razors” at all, especially since Android Tablets will be made out of commodity parts, will use cheap LCD display technology and will be far more capable, and many will be priced in the $200-$300 range and well within striking distance of the current price of dedicated e-readers.

Indeed, e-ink may be superior for daytime reading, and at least for the time being, the hardcore reader types, most of which are Boomers, will go out and buy Kindles and Nooks for their content consumption this summer at the beach.

But the Millennials will only be interested in their iPhones, iPads and Droids, with brilliant and sharp color displays, and the App versions of these e-book stores will suit most of these people fine, at least for the remaining ones that still like to read books.

In the next year Vizplex e-Ink will almost certainly be revved to color technology, but for the dedicated reading device, it will be too late.

By then, different competing high-performance transflective LCD displays will be on the scene, manufactured in huge volumes ...

Released: Borders eBook app for iPad

The free Kobo-based app can be downloaded here. Use this app to login to your existing Borders account from your iPad, re-download your previously purchased titles, and buy new eBooks. Also runs on the iPhone, of course. Currently only available within the United States. As is usually the case with Borders/Kobo, the app falls short. According to Chris Davis at SlashGear, the "app doesn’t appear to sync automatically – such as updating to the last page you read on any device – across their other platforms; the company already sells various dedicated ereaders, including the Kobo eReader, the Aluratek Libre and several Sony Reader models." As previously noted, a Kobo Android app dropped several days ago and has a few tech glitches.