Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Electronic Readers: Do You Have Yours Yet?


Electronic Readers are not new but the Kindle from Amazon is. It takes the ordinary electronic reader to a whole new level and possibly will reform the way we read books. That is according to Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com. In an interview with Newsweek Magazine, Bezos was quoted as saying “The vision is that you should be able to get any book—not just any book in print, but any book that’s ever been in print—on Kindle, in less than a minute.”

I am not going to write a review on the Kindle, I want to send you over to Jon Morrow at onmoneymaking.com and read his informative and compelling post on this amazing product. I found Jon at Success from the Nest where he wrote a guest post about how not to become a "Home Based Hermit" .

Before I found out about the Kindle, I bought a Sony Reader and my main reason for purchasing this $300 gadget is to download all my e-books and have them available for reading at the click of a button. (There are cheaper readers but I don’t know the brand names and for a $100 more I could have had a Kindle) Printing e-books from my printer is out of the question since many of them are hundreds of pages in length. The Sony Reader measures 5 x 7 inches and has a leatherette cover which gives the feel of a real book more or less. Approximately 160 books can be downloaded to this compact electronic wonder. You can easily drop it in your purse or brief case.

Although reading by adults has declined from 62% to 57% in the past decade I hope that an electronic reader will be able to bring that number up.

Honestly I had not considered using an electronic reader until I went to a book signing event at my local library hosting John Schembra, author of M.P. A novel of Vietnam and Priscilla Royal, author of Wine of Violence, A Medieval Mystery. Both authors touted the benefits of a reader. Writers are quite often on the go and it is the portable ability of the reader that is attractive to busy people, like writers.

That’s all I needed. Now I feel that I can reap the benefits of all my e books rather than let them hang in the ether's of my computer.

Has anyone else had experience with electronic readers? Am I the last kid on the block to know about these? If you do indeed use an electronic reader, what is your evaluation?


Write it down,

Carma