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Thursday
Jan282010

Artillery and ammunition in the eBook wars

The ebook wars are truly launched. The artillery have been unveiled: the Kindle, the Nook, the Que, and now the iPad. Now that the iPad has been unveiled, nothing is more certain than that I’ll never buy a Kindle.

But I may yet buy many Kindle books.

The iPhone is a wonderful device for reading linear narratives. With the dimensions of a newspaper column, reading is fast and easy.

Yesterday I discussed receiving a shipment of physical books. I still use physical books for reference material, and for books that have tables and graphics and images. Now that the iPad has a large, high-resolution screen, this calculus may in the future change. The iPad may tempt me to purchase these types of books.

But it will all come down to the ammunition—the books themselves—that Apple and Amazon manage to provide. In Apple’s event today, they hinted that book prices may be higher than Amazon’s. If so, I may continue purchasing novels from Amazon. Also, if the range is expansive—like their music and app stores—it will do so much better than if the range is limited—like their supply of movies.

An aside: On the way to work yesterday, I began reading the The Art of Scalability. As my bus drove into a tunnel, the light darkened and I was unable to read the page. Having gotten used to reading from an iPhone, not being able to see the page was a bit of a shock.

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Reader Comments (2)

Welcome to the page, I hope you will like it!perry m

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11.4.8 | Unregistered CommenterEllie

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