I would have to agree that there is no competition for the Kindle right now in light of its wireless capability and the number of titles it offers. But, I don’t agree that the Sony device is dead.

Here’s how they can grab a larger share of the market than Amazon.

They have a joint venture with Ericsson, Sony Ericsson, a mobile phone manufacturer. If they are not working on it now they should be - they can easily make a wireless electronic reader on the GSM phone network. That device would work not only in the US, but also in most of Europe, Asia and Australia. The Kindle’s wireless capability is limited to the US.

With such a device, don’t you think the number of titles offered by Sony would easily be 10 times that of Amazon if not more? Don’t you think every publisher in the world would want to be connected with the Sony Reader - a device that offers titles from most of the civilized world and a device that works worldwide?

The possibilities are endless for Sony.

Sony’s recent firmware upgrade for the 505 allows purchase of PDF’s and .epub books from ebooks sellers other than the Sony ebook store.
Don’t know the exact figures, but the available titles to purchase for the Sony ereader is now far in excess of the 40,000 you state.
Plus, the competition from different stores on price for ebooks in PDF and .epub format is to be welcomed.

If amazon would let you have a directory on the memory or SD that you can dump kindle java programs into and then they show up in the experimental menu that would be great. They have already mentioned they aren’t against people hacking. They said that kind of thing is bound to happen, but I haven’t seen anything yet.

An example is To Light a Candle by Mercedes Lackey. Paperback price: $7.99. Kindle price? $22.36. The prices are just as outrageous for other books from Tor for this author.

It seems what the company has done is released first books in series for free, and is now planning on gouging ebook owners for the rest of the series titles–charging us more for a Kindle copy then we’d have to pay for a paperback.

- Notepad and/or post-it notes.
- Calendar with an alarm.
- Instant messaging client — maybe even one that works directly with other Kindles to add to the social aspect.
- A utility to share clippings.
- A utility that can convert location numbers to page numbers based on 1st edition publication. Great for reading groups and citations.
- A utility to add covers of books you’ve purchased to your screensaver pictures.
- A utility that would allow you to upload all of your purchases and/or downloaded books to a social reading site such as Shelfari.
- And obviously the feature that most users have been asking for: FOLDERS.

http://m.ebuddy.com

Imagine loading up your kindle with several books before traveling only to have it snatched at the Border. It’s like a modern day version of “Time Enough At Last.”

“It’s not fair!”

I’m pleased to be publishing on the Kindle platform and I look forward to a long and fruitful relationship to enhance the one I already have with Amazon for my print editions.

Viva Amazon!

yeah, your post affirms what I was trying to get across about the $9.99 being almost a psychological barrier.

I researched a bit more and it turns out that a lot of people share this view. There’s a post on kindleville from a few weeks back that kind of says the same thing;

http://kindleville.blogspot.com/2008/06/how-important-is-999-ebook-price-level.html

I don’t know what Amazon can do about it however, ultimately its up to the publishers to make the final pricing decision. I for one wont be paying more than $9.99 for an e-book unless its something exceptional.

I think the pricing is in the hands of the publishers, not Amazon. After all, it’s in Amazon’s best interest to keep e-book prices low since it’s a selling point of the Kindle device. Publishers, on the other hand, may not understand the new technology and assume that customers will pay “normal” prices for e-books.

Just the other day I read a review of a book that looked very interesting, so I went straight to the Kindle store to look for it. It was $15, and the hardcover was only $17. That just doesn’t make sense, especially considering there are no material or production costs for ebooks.

Needless to say I didn’t buy the book. I’ll get it from my local library.

I don’t know if publishers or Amazon are to blame for the confusing pricing of Kindle editions, but the sooner they both learn that ebooks SHOULD be priced considerably less than physical books they’ll both be making a lot more money on impulse buys and casual purchases.

Sub KindleTextMacro()
‘
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
.Text = “”
.Replacement.Text = “”
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = False
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchWildcards = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
End With
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
.Text = “^p^p”
.Replacement.Text = “APLACEHOLDER”
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = False
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchWildcards = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
End With
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
.Text = “^p”
.Replacement.Text = ” ”
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = False
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchWildcards = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
End With
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
.Text = “APLACEHOLDER”
.Replacement.Text = “^p^p”
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = False
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchWildcards = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
End With
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
End Sub

Since newspapers are supported by ads how is this going to work? For a while it will work without ads, but at some point the electronic version is going to have to generate revenue for the papers

However, Kindle/Amazon could really use a better way to store, sort, and categorize digital book libraries. There is no reason I shouldn’t have my entire eBook collection with me on the size of data cards I can get - but the Kindle interface totally sucks for organization of more than a couple screens of titles. The iTunes/iPod genres, ratings, etc coupled with smart lists would work great for me on a Kindle.

Monopolies are a terrible deal for consumers; it’s too bad there isn’t a “Pepsi” to Amazon’s “Coke” so that at least there is someone to play off Amazon.