Barnes & Noble Dumps E-books

[rogerd]

Just got a notice as a B&N affiliate that they are dumping ebooks effective September 9. Despite the problems with reader form factors and high prices, I'm a bit sad about this. I think ebooks will be important in the long run, but clearly they aren't a prime market right now.

[4eyes]

Aaagh, No

Bang goes my plans to become a millionaire by publishing my 'how to become a millionaire' book.

Drat - gonna have to do a real job now

Seriously though - there just HAS to be a future for E-Books, what is going wrong out there?

[killroy]

I tell you: no readers.

I'm not goonna read a book on a computer.

and I'm not gonna spend the abhorrent cash to get a pda.

What we need is a cheap, throw-away device the size of a pda with a high-res greyscale screen and zero processing power JUST to read ebooks.

Make it $10-$30 and dump the funcitonality.

That's what I'm waiting for. Once I can read my books on hte bus and in bed on a book-sized device wit ha clear, easy-read screen, then I'm in, and then I'll pay for eBooks too.

SN

[4eyes]

I have a pda and have used it to read a few full length e-books - classics like Wilkie Collins, Sherlock Holmes etc

It is not an easy experience, although it is just bearable.
Even on the PDA the screen is just too damn small for normal reading.

Also, battery life is bit of a limitation.

What I need is a reader the size of a paperback that has a battery life of 6 months.

Guess I am going to wait a while.

[thewebboy]

Well a few problems are that there are many formats, microsoft, adobe, plus several others. We need one standardized format.

Another problem is price, some ebooks were only like $1 less than the print versions, I rather pay an extra dollar or 2 for the print version.

Finally, nobody wants to read a long book on there computer.

[bateman_ap]

Have tried the book on my pda (one of those free ones with Visual Studio MS gave away) and just gave up after a few pages. Really doesn't work.

However the Guardian through AvantGo on the PDA in the mornings is truely amazing, prehaps it is better suited to shorter peices?

[cfx211]

Maybe the ebook format is a little too long right now. I am sure this line was losing money for years and didn't look like it was going to pull up anytime soon.

There are new developments in the online publishing field like http:*//www.redpaper.com where you can charge anything (usually less than a buck) for any sort of work a person wants to put out there.

This might be the right fit for online publishing until someone can find a way to make reading a digital book easy on the eyes.