So someone wrote a short blog post about how the Kindle has changed the way they read:
http://dbasch.posterous.com/amazon-has-drastically-changed-the-way-i-read
Kindle advantages (according to the post):
- pipeline of unread books to read through
- multiple Kindle apps, can continue reading on any device
- buying books based on Kindle store availability
- so cheap it's treated as an appliance
All ebook apps have a pipeline of unread books.
It is is available on Android, Windows and GNU/Linux (Ubuntu package but the source is licensed under the GNU GPL, so not a problem to create new packages). That covers the second point only partially. Of course it keeps track of the last page you read, but it doesn't do this for multiple devices. For example, I'm using Dropbox (yes it's evil and yes I'm looking to switch away from it!) and it would be nice if the metadata used by Cool Reader were stored in the same directory as my ebooks. Then I could truly continue reading on any device. As it is, I have to remember the last page I was on.
I think the third point is helped by when authors and publishers make it clear on their websites that an epub version can be bought. O'Reilly does this I think and so do a few other publishers. It would be nice if we started a letter writing campaign or something to promote that. While some book publishers are still wary of selling ebooks, the ones that already sell ebooks could make it more clear that they're selling DRM-free ebooks.
The appliance argument can be fought against in two ways; recommend devices that are super cheap but are as free/open as possible (the cheapest/libre-est Android phone or tablet could work, even an HP Touchpad would work since WebOS is now free), and put out more "propaganda" that promotes the perspective of any computing device as a general computing device rather than an appliance.
Thoughts?
Rudolf O.