Reply #47: The future isn't a dedicated device [View All]

I like the Kindle, the Nook, and others (I'm in book publishing and we've got a variety of platforms in-house). However, they are transition devices and there are some pretty murky issues that still haven't been addressed. The transition is pretty obviously heading toward one single personal device, the current sticking point is that displays are currently not nearly flexible enough. E-ink is awesome in battery life, pure readability, and cost. It can't do color, nor can it handle moving images well. Color screens are very versatile, are nearly as readable, but eat batteries. But it much more than color (animation, video etc.) vs. grey (stability, battery life). A bigger factor is size. The Kindle is pretty small, but it isn't as portable as a smart phone. Simply put, the future is a smart phone with a flexible display.

As for school advantages...not yet. It is a lot of money for a school to put out for each kid, the textbooks really won't/can't truly cost significantly less than current books (do you think e-books edit/fact-check, write themselves?) Also, check out the license agreements--a physical book can be shared or passed along (it can also be sold). E-book licenses typically don't allow that (at least not the books selling at a fraction of the price paper books sell). The only reason many current titles are less in digital format is because the paper versions are subsidizing them--that isn't sustainable for anything other than best-seller titles. It won't work for most books, and certainly not for textbooks which are very high cost to create and must be updated regularly.