The Year of the e-reader?
Not my line. (I thought it was last year 
) But the Sydney Morning Herald’s tech writer, Asher Moses:
A torrent of portable devices for reading e-books, newspapers and magazines was unleashed this week, with some models adding colour screens and even computers running Windows 7 and Google’s Android software.
The hype surrounding e-book reader devices at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas was deafening
Before we get too excited, this is the tech pages of the online version of the Herald. When the book review section has e-book prices in its reviews, then we might be there…
I’m also concerned that there is a diversity of formats and screen dimensions that will make it difficult for the potential publisher. After all, as this is one area that I am interested in, I have to consider what is needed to prepare for everything from Kindle on, so to speak, and this is resulting in a form of paralysis of will, as I don’t know where to start, or how.
Hey Phillip
The issue isn’t so much screen dimensions but formats. Most e-book formats ‘reflow’ the text to fit the screen of whatever device is being used – in fact, publishers need to get used to the fact that readers might want to change fonts, sizes and colours etc on their e-book readers. The choice of e-book format is more problematic – epub is the favourite amongst the platform agnostic, but kindle’s proprietary approach may gain traction if amazon gets the key market share.
Cheers Sherman