Here comes the e-book revolution

Sunday, February 8th, 2009

Here comes the e-book revolution, Mike Elgan says:

At what temperature do electronic books catch fire? We’re going to find out sometime this year. E-book sales are about to ignite.

On Monday, Amazon.com is expected to unveil a new version of its Kindle reader. It will probably be a lot better and a little cheaper than the first version. But the real news already broke this week: A company spokesman announced that Amazon plans to offer Kindle books on cell phones.

This news countered Google’s announcement that the 1.5 million public domain books available on its Google Book Search offering will soon be available (free, of course) via a new cell phone application.

He lists six trends driving this growth, but I have to wonder about his very first trend:

1. The economy. The economy is in the tank, and people are looking to cut costs any way they can. An Amazon Kindle pays for itself after the purchase of 20 or 30 books, then starts paying dividends.

In a bad economy, people are going to make a big up-front expenditure that will pay back after they buy 20 to 30 books?

I found this analysis amusing:

The blog did the math and determined that the New York Times could buy every single subscriber an Amazon Kindle e-book reader, and it would still cost them half as much as it will cost them to send paper newspapers for just one year.

Posted in Business, Media, Technology | No Comments »

Shadeburst: The three thousand feet sounds highly suspect. A formation of WW2 Forts would drop all its bombs simultaneously on a signal from the lead bombardier. As the formation was spread out across the sky, side- as well as long-ways, and the bombs were released over a period of a few seconds (during which time the formation had traveled a thousand feet) the intention was to bomb an area, not a pickle-barrel pinpoint. In addition, Europe being Europe, the target might often be obscured by cloud, in...
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Lucklucky: Maybe bad translation. But i think it means it is better to have 1 good and 1 bad than 2 good to be able to choose.
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Gaikokumaniakku: After the lemur bites the millipede, it sprays its toxic secretion, which the lemur then rubs all over its fur. Research suggests that there is a practical purpose to this: the benzoquinone secretion functions as a natural pesticide and wards off malaria-carrying mosquitos. The secretion also acts as a narcotic, which causes the lemur to salivate profusely and enter a state of intoxication.
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Felix: Jim, what are the important, unread books you have in mind?
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Isegoria

Here comes the e-book revolution

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