Sony launched a new Reader last week. Sony is keeping it’s “entry-level” model, the PRS 505, and adding the up market PRS 700. The PRS505 has a 6″ eink screen and sells for $299. The PRS700 has a 6″ eink touch screen and integrated front light and sells for $399. The Kindle has a 6″ eink screen, a keyboard, and cellular access to the internet and sells for $399. The Cybook has a 6″ eink screen and sells for $369.00. IRex introduced its newest model and instead of being smaller and less expensive than its original, its larger and more expensive at 10.2″ for the screen and $799 for the price.

What’s consistent about all these eink ebook readers? The price. There is no real entry level ebook reader. The longer that I pay attention to the publishing market, the more convinced I am that cost is hugely important, particularly when you are selling a single function device. I know that e-ink readers are in their early stages but ebook readers are not. Ebook readers were first developed in 1991 when Sony introduced the Sony Data Discman. Gemstar launched its ebook reader in 2000. This has been revived as the eBookwise Reader, a grayscale LED that sells for $100-$130. Even if we were to peg the ebook readers birth with the release of the eink devices in 2006 with Sony’s first release, the PRS500, why can’t the publishing industry and the corresponding technology industry that overlaps, learn from past market penetration issues.

When Apple first introduced a single function device in 2001 called the iPod. It’s sole goal was to play digital music in a portable fashion. As the iPod has grown and evolved, there is only one single function product left in its lineup. It is the iPod Shuffle and it sells for $49. Every other portable music player in Apple’s lineup is a MULTI FUNCTION DEVICE. I had to shout that. (I feel like pulling a Biden. Let me repeat that, “every other portable music player in Apple’s line up is a multi-function device). From the Nano to the iPhone, the rest of the iPod lineup offers more than one functionality. As the bottom of the scale is the Nano and the Classic, both of which offer the ability to play videos and music, as well as store photos and games.

While all the eink readers have the ability to play music, it’s an afterthought, not an integrated part of the design. Further, because of the tiny memory footprint on these devices (all have less than 1 GB in memory), the music playing abilities do not transform the eink readers into a multi function device.

It’s not that I find it incorrect for manufacturers of ebook readers to put out single function devices. However, to put out single function devices at such as high cost when there are multi fuction devices available at a lower cost, what is the incentive for a person to purchase the single function device? Even those that love to read more than anything balk at paying plus $300 for a device that does only one thing.

While I laud Sony for taking a step forward and to offer competition for Amazon, it seems to me that it is missing a vital part of the market. It may be that the components of an eink reader are so expensive as to not permit a manufacturer from selling a truly entry level eink reader. Astak.com had been touting a sub $200 device that would have a 5″ screen, but in a relauch of its ebook reader site (hat tip to Bev QB), Astak has eliminated any reference to the 5″, sub $200 device. Instead, the consumer is told about a 6″ device which will be offered in late November 2008 and will cost $300.

I’m all for more fully featured eink readers. I love the touchscreen and I’ll love the Sony touchscreen + wi fi when it comes out. But is that really what potential ebook readers want? To gain the reluctant, but interested ebook reader, I think we need to have a sub $200 eink device. A $100 eink reader might be one of the hottest gifts of the season. A $400 one is a luxury good and with all the bankers on Wall Street losing their jobs, there just won’t be enough of those buyers to go around. In order for ebook reading to take off, it must have market penetration. why not offer up a device that is the “Must Have College Grad” gift. Because right now what college grad is going to aks for the $400 Kindle/Sony when they can get the $200 iTouch/iPhone?

If eink displays are too expensive, then maybe it’s time to consider other options. Maybe a 6″ LCD screen really won’t be that much of a bother to people’s eyes. It’s true that eink techology makes digital displays look like paper, but perhaps that is simply the wrong metric to use. With more and more people accustomed to reading on their laptops, then an LCD screen isn’t going to be foreign or even off putting to them. I don’t really know, from a technological standpoint, what the solution is. What I do know is that selling increasingly more expensive eink devices isn’t going to break open the ereader market, no matter how feature rich the device is. Either ebook readers need to go multi function or their prices have to come way down. Right now, the ebook industry is missing a major part of the market.

Welcome to First Page Saturday. Individual authors anonymously send a first page read and critiqued by the Dear Author community of authors, readers and industry others. Anyone is welcome to comment. You may comment anonymously.

***

GAAAAAAA!!!!!!!

Daphne Delaney looked to the doorway to see her assistant Cloe McBride having a mini-freakout over the floral delivery for the engagement party they were in charge of organizing. Giggling to herself, she took her time walking to the table that held the flowers and plants before they were arranged around the room. Although Daphne and Cloe had only known each other since Cloe had come to work at Daphne’s event planning business, Excellent Events and Occasions, six months ago, one of Daphne’s main sources of entertainment in life was tormenting her friend. Sometimes bordering on evil (affectionately of course), this pastime was, at times, too easy but it was great fun damn it and Daphne took pride in rattling Cloe.

“Oh my God!” exclaimed Daphne as she approached the flowers, watching Cloe panic further. “Those topiaries look amazing!”

“Are you blind in addition to being out of your mind?? They’ve got brown spots on the leaves, they’re kind of droopy, they’re too short, and…”

Laughing, Daphne cut her off saying, “They’re fine. Don’t worry so much! I can handle the spots and the droopies. As for the height, we have some flagstones in the storage room that we can use to make them a little taller. You go grab some of the stones and I’ll take care of these.”

Daphne chuckled as she watched Cloe head towards the storeroom at the other end of the building. Running a quick eye around the rest of the room, Daphne made mental notes of what was finished and what yet needed done. Today’s event was more of a personal one than business. Her good friends Ella Sprunger and Duncan Murray had recently gotten engaged and Daphne was doing their engagement party. She had offered to do it for free but met with such resistance that they all compromised on doing it for cost. She had been in business for three years but had just purchased this building seven months ago.

Having formerly been a small, family owned funeral home in Libertyville, Indiana, the building was already nicely decorated and only required some minimal renovations and updating. What had been two viewing rooms, Daphne converted into two all-purpose rooms that she rented out for receptions, parties and other events. There was also a storage area in the back, basement space under most of the building and a couple of offices at the front off of the sitting area just inside the entrance. It even had an apartment on the second story that came furnished although Daphne had yet to actually use it. She still couldn’t believe her luck in acquiring the building. The previous owners, former clients actually, had won an obscenely large amount of money in the state lottery. They promptly offered to sell the building to Daphne, sold the icky funeral home stuff and retired to Italy. Their 30th wedding anniversary party had been one of the very first events that Daphne had planned after starting her business and they had kept in touch ever since.

***

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This poll is courtesy of Ned.

Me: I need a new poll question.

Ned: Can it be about your parents?

Me: What?

Ned: If you had to buy books or visit your parents, which would it be?

Me: Geez, you even have to ask?

Ned: Can I watch ESPN now?

There were rumors this summer that a new Kindle would be released in October/November. Then Amazon doused that rumor. Now we have pictures of a slightly less fugly, but still no Sony, NEW Kindle. (note to Amazon, hire a new designer, seriously).

Photo via Gizmodo.  More pictures available through BoyGenius.

Sony unveiled it’s newest device, the PRS 700, complete with a touchscreen and integrated front light (click link for picture).  It’s like a battle between form and function.  Want wireless, got to go with Kindle. What style and an integrated front light, then Sony is your choice.

Dear Ms. Kleypas:

Some have told me that Seduce Me at Sunrise was as good as Kleypas’ penultimate book, Dreaming of You, featuring Derek Craven and Sara Fielding. The book had some similar underpinnings with the hero being of the lower class with a grotesque background who feels completely unworthy to be loved by the heroine, a gently bred young woman. What I thought was similar was the strong emotional connection between Merripen and Win, the leads in Seduce Me at Sunrise.

There’s a papable physical attraction, but even more than that is the fierce emotional ties that bind them.

Win says to Merripen:

I am running after you, and life, in desperate pursuit. My dream is that someday you will both turn and let me catch you. That dream carries me through every night I long to tell you so many things, but I am not free yet I hope to be well enough someday to shock you again, with far more pleasing results.

Merripen thinks of Win:

Because it wasn’t hers to give.

Your heart is mine, he thought savagely. It belongs to me.

Winnifred was struck by scarlet fever and while she survived, her physical state was greatly weakened. She was pretty much an invalid. When her sister marries a wealthy man, the family now has the means to get Win medical care. Win chooses a risky and experimental clinic in France. It may kill her but it also may make her well. She feels that if she wasn’t so frail and delicate, if she wasn’t an invalid, then Merripen and she can be together.

Merripen would rather Winnifred stays an invalid for the rest of her life because at least she would be alive and with him. Merripen is a gypsy who was taken in by the Hathaway family when he was left for dead by his tribe. He’s fiercely protective of the family and loves Win desperately. He believes can’t ever hold her or really have her because he isn’t good enough for her given his background. His existence on this world, though, continues only because she is here. Win goes off, gets better, and returns but after two years and one letter from Merripen Win wonders if she shouldn’t just move on. So when she returns, she brings back her doctor, Julian Harrow. Julian and she have grown close and Win brings him home with her so that he can have the chance to woo her.

If romance readers read primarily for a visceral reaction, this book will be hugely successful because Merripen and Win’s strength of feeling for each other is remarkable. The problem, for me, however, was that the details, character motivations, and plot were kind of a puzzle to me. Merripen mistrusts Harrow from the beginning. There is something off about Harrow yet Merripen does nothing to protect Win from Harrow even when she wants him to, even when he has the perfect opportunity to do so. This reaction was so curious given that Merripen loved Win more than the breath in his own body.

There were long stretches of story given over to revisiting Amelia and Cam which I thought were pleasant but unnecessary, particularly when I really didn’t understand Merripen’s motivations or Win’s motivations.  The villian’s motivations were as murky as anyone else’s and given that villianry plays an important part in Win and Merripen’s emotional breakthrough, it was important for me to have some kind of understanding as to the why the villian acted in a certain manner.

As brave as Win was, she certainly played a secondary role to Merripen, Cam, Leo (her brother) and sometimes even Amelia. Indeed, I found that Leo had the best lines and seemed to steal whatever scene he was in:

“Most women have a tragic attraction to rakes,” he said regretfully. “I really shouldn’t use it against them.”

and

“Now you’ll weep for a different cause,” he told Amelia. “Because as you see, I’ve come back as well.”

She flew to him, and was swallowed in a strong embrace. “The French wouldn’t have you?” she asked, her voice muffled against his chest.

“On the contrary, they adored me. But there’s no entertainment in staying where one is wanted.”

and

The comment seemed to incense her beyond all expectation. “I am aware of your reputation as a skirt chaser, my lord. I find no cause for humor in it.”

Leo didn’t think she found cause for humor in much of anything. “My reputation has lasted in spite of a nearly three-year absence?” he asked, affecting a tone of pleased surprise.

“You’re proud of it?”

“Well, of course. It’s easy to have a good reputation— you merely have to do nothing. But earning a bad reputation… well, that takes some effort.”

It’s probably an understatement to say that I look forward to Leo’s book. His wry, sardonic way lent a good dose of humor to a book that could have been overwrought with angst. The emotional tone of the book was well balanced. It was just that the machinations of the characters often seemed contrived as did events that furthered the plot. The ending, in particular, had an air of convenient romancelandia scriptedness to it. A reader is not likely to be disappointed in having read the book, but I did hope for something more. B-

Best regards,

Jane

This book can be purchased in mass market from Amazon or Powells. No ebook format. Come on, SMP, what are you waiting for?

AuthorTalk authors Gena Showalter and Jill Monroe interview author Deidre Knight.  Haven’t watched it yet but expect it to be very funny.

This week we have a bunch of slightly depressing-sounding historical novels and a few time-travels.

2012 seems like a very long time away.
Author of The Secret History and The Little Friend Donna Tartt’s new novel, a story of loss and obsession about a young man, guilt-stricken and damaged after the death of his mother, and the growing power that a stolen piece of art exercises over him, drawing him into an underworld of theft and corruption where nothing is as it seems, to Michael Pietsch at Little, Brown, for publication in 2012, by Amanda Urban at ICM (NA).

An inspy time-travel?
Deborah Kinnard’s SEASONS IN THE MIST, a time-travel romance set in 1353 Cornwall, to Joan Shoup at Sheaf House, for publication in Spring 2010, by Tamela Hancock Murray at Hartline Literary Agency.

More historicals for Kensington’s line.
Beverley Kendall’s A LADY’S COMPROMISE, in which a rakish earl is caught between the seductive young lady who adores him and his best friend — the lady’s brother — who would do anything to keep them apart, to Hilary Sares at Kensington, by Emmanuelle Alspaugh at Judith Ehrlich Literary Management.

This book has gotten a lot of buzz on PM in the past week. Italian, German, and Canadian rights have all been sold in the past week. Sounds like it’s being groomed to be a blockbuster.
Anne Fortier’s JULIET, which reinvents the world’s most famous love story, interweaving a tale of contemporary and medieval Siena in which a young woman discovers her family heritage may be descended from the true story behind Romeo and Juliet, to Libby McGuire and Susanna Porter at Ballantine, in a major deal, in a pre-empt, by Daniel Lazar at Writers House (US).

Didn’t she have like a hundred kids? I’d be troubled too.
Gaynor Arnold’s Booker Prize longlisted GIRL IN A BLUE DRESS, based on the troubled marriage of Charles Dickens, a riveting portrait of a woman who is doomed to live in the shadow of her husband, the most celebrated author in the Victorian world, Suzanne O’Neill at Crown, by Geraldine Cooke and Hannah Ferguson at The Marsh Agency.

I guess I am a stick in the mud but I don’t find ‘sensual’ and ‘public transportation’ to be two things that go good together.
Eden Bradley’s NIGHT MOVES, featuring a sensual train ride in which two people meet, and could change each other’s lives forever, to Susan Pezzack-Swinwood at Harlequin Spice EBriefs, in a nice deal, by Roberta Brown of the Brown Literary Agency.

This sounds like an urban fantasy. I’m kind of wishing the blurb had more details.
M.K. Hobson’s THE NATIVE STAR, in which a young witch must travel cross-country in order to get a magical stone removed from her hand before it destroys her, the man she secretly loves, and the entire planet as well, to Juliet Ulman at Spectra, in a nice deal, in a two-book deal, by Ginger Clark at Curtis Brown (NA).

More time travel. Did The Time-Traveler’s Wife suddenly make time travel vogue again?
Hugh McCracken’s MASTERS OF THE HUNT, The latest in a series of YA novels about a group of young time travellers, sees them older and wiser in Medieval Scotland, recruiting the teenaged William Wallace, Braveheart, to their cause, RULES OF THE HUNT, and RETURN FROM THE HUNG, to Neil Marr at BeWrite Books, for publication in Summer 2009.

I am all over this like white on rice. Like yellow on a bus. Like Harriet Klausner on Amazon
Becca Ajoy Fitzpatrick’s Hush, Hush, a sexy and dangerous romance about a teenage girl who falls in love with a fallen angel with a dark agenda to get his wings back, to Emily Meehan at Simon & Schuster Children’s, in a two-book deal, for publication in Spring 2010, by Catherine Drayton at Inkwell Management (NA).

Sounds kind of horrific but compelling.
Cynthia Jaynes Omololu’s DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS, in which the garbage-filled world of a 16-year-old girl comes crashing down around her, even as she gets her first glimpse of what it might be like to be “normal” rather than living cloaked in the secret shame of her mom’s out-of-control hoarding, to Mary Kate Castellani at Walker, by Erin Murphy of Erin Murphy Literary Agency (world).

I smell dystopian YA. So 2007 was YA fairies. 2008 was YA zombies. 2009 is dystopian & post-apoc? (Please?)
Alexander Gordon Smith’s LOCKDOWN, SOLITARY, and DEATH SENTENCE, the first three books in the FURNACE series about a teen trapped in a futuristic prison for young offenders, to Wesley Adams at Farrar, Straus Children’s, for publication in Fall 2009 for Book One, by Sophie Hicks at Ed Victor Ltd. (NA).

This is the series that’s purportedly like a novel version of the medical dramas. I guess it is doing well for Berkley.
LIFELINES and the forthcoming WARNING SIGNS author CJ Lyons’s next medical suspense novel, featuring the women of Pittsburgh’s Angels of Mercy Hospital, again to Shannon Jamieson-Vazquez at Berkley, by Anne Hawkins at John Hawkins & Associates.

Another famous guy and his ladylove in a historical weep-fest.
Award-winning author of The Physician of London and Marrying Mozart Stephanie Cowell’s THE GREEN DRESS, a wonderful re-imagining of the tragic love story between the young, ambitious Claude Monet and his muse, Camille Doncieux, to Suzanne O’Neill at Crown, in a good deal, for publication in Spring 2010, by Emma Sweeney at Emma Sweeney Agency (NA).

I’m trying to mentally imagine this pitch and drawing a blank.
Clare Willis’s ONCE BITTEN, pitched as Angel meets Melrose Place, to John Scognamiglio at Kensington, in a nice deal, in a two-book deal, by Joanna MacKenzie at Browne & Miller Literary Associates (World).

Another historical with a happy ending…oh wait.
Julianne Lee’s BLOODY MARY, about Mary Tudor, to Ginjer Buchanan at Berkley, in a nice deal, by Ginger Clark at Curtis Brown (NA).

Do any ‘seekers of love’ ever look for love in the right places?
Alina Bronsky’s THE BROKEN-GLASS PARK, the edgy, dark, but ultimately life-affirming story of the daughter of Russian immigrants in Germany, precocious child of the projects, self-declared avenger of her mother’s murder, seeker for love (mostly in the wrong places), to Michael Reynolds at Europa Editions, by Markus Hoffmann at Regal Literary, on behalf of Kiepenheuer & Witsch (NA).