Dear Author: Romance Book Reviews, Author Interviews, and Commentary

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I’m doing a two piece buying guide for ebook reading devices.  What would be your preference?  Mine is the iPhone. I’ve had both the Sony Reader and the iPhone and found myself reading the iPhone so much I sent my Sony Reader to Jayne.  Everyone is different though.

Edited to Add: Below I recommend buying the Sony PRS700 with the built in light. According to the guys at Gizmodo and Sunita below, this light actually degrades the quality of the screen. You may, instead, want to go the PRS505 route from Wal-mart who is selling them (including the red one) for $269.99. I highly recommend getting a light and the Sony light is a really elegant addition.

Last year, I posted a buying guide for those who are looking for ebook readers and I thought it would be kind of fun to do that again, given that technology keeps changing.  I’ll give a list of pros and cons for each kind of device and my opinion as to why to buy a certain one.   I hope those who own these devices will jump in and give their own opinions as well.  Today’s article addresses dedicated ebook readers and next week’s article will address the multi-function devices.

Black Friday Tip:  

While ebook readers aren’t part of the Black Friday sales, often times memory cards are.  If you are …

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 …

Sony made it's big ereading announcement today. They are doubling down on the ereading business by relauching their bookstore and introducing a new Sony Reader. The key features include a touchscreen and a built in front light. The screen size is 6", uses eink technology, and costs $399.00. While I love the new features, it sounds like the touchscreen is only usable for paging forward and backward via tapping to which I say, what a waste. The integrated front light is genius though. Via Mobile Read.

When I was at RWA, I had the opportunity to see the Kindle and the new Sony Reader with booklight and the Asus EEE PC. These are all viable ebook readers that you can purchase today, along with my personal favorite, the iTouch/iPhone.

Neither the Kindle nor the Reader is a perfect device and frankly, I don’t know if there is a perfect device in the near future. The perfect device has the instantaneous purchase ability of the Kindle with the versality and look of the Reader. The keyboard of the Kindle is quite nice as is the ability to highlight and annotate. The Reader’s lightwedge style booklight accessory provided two levels of brightness for the light flooding the surface of the screen. It’s a perfect look and fit that the Kindle doesn’t have.

Last week, though, I said that if you were interested in eBook readers you should wait until October. The reason for this is that there are fairly credible rumors that Amazon is going to release an updated Kindle. I find the report a bit odd given that the Kindle was released in mid November of 2007. …

Nicole, this post is for you. Sony is offering a $100 creditbl for all first Generation purchasers of the Sony Reader if you want to upgrade to the newest Sony Reader. The current price for the Sony Reader is $299.00.

The details are as follows as articulated at MobileRead:

Customers doing the upgrade will buy the 505 first and then send in their old 500 to get the credit. This means you may have to wait a bit to get the credit, but it also means that you won’t ever be without a Reader.

There is a shipping cost to send back your old unit. But when buying the new unit, SonyStyle.com often offers free shipping.

This is a Sony-only promotion, which means you can buy online at SonyStyle.com or in person at a SonyStyle store, not third party retailers.

If you bring the old unit into the store and do the trade right then and there, the credit will be applied at purchase. If you do the trade later or purchase online, the credit comes back when Sony receives the 500.

This is a US-only promotion. (Not good for UK 505 purchases.)
Extended warranties do not appear to be transferrable to the …

Last week, Sony announced two new features to its ebook reader that makes it one of the more attractive options for ereading. First, it announced a book light overlay that mimics the LightWedge. I’ve always thought that eink devices were physically missing an important feature - a backlight. E-ink technology actually prevents a backlight so the only way to adequately light the unit is a front light. The Lightwedge-like booklight is a step in the right direction.

The second piece of news is that Sony adapted its software so that Sony Reader owners of the PR505 (second version) could now read Adobe PDFs and ePubs. This is really a seismic change because readers are NO LONGER TIED to shopping at the Sony Connect store. Readers can now buy books from Harlequin who provides every single one of its series books one month before their paper release date. Readers can purchase books from Fictionwise and take advantage of the micropay rebates or they can purchase books from BooksonBoard which often has the cheapest ebook prices around, even better than Amazon.

More importantly, Sony’s …

Sony Reader has released a cover for the Sony Reader that contains an integrated light. It’s like the Light Wedge and runs off two AA batteries. It’s a beautifully elegant solution and I would love to see one of these suckers in person. Click on the MobileRead link to see the picture.
One thing that this shows is that Sony is listening to its customer base and that the Kindle is making Sony more competitive. The cost is $69.99.
Via MobileRead.

This is really, really good news for ebook readers. The Sony Reader will now accept and read encrypted PDFs and the new ePub format. I believe that you should be able to access prior purchased Adobe PDFs and future purchases of Adobe PDF on the Sony Reader. Opening up the reader to accept other DRM’ed platforms is a big step toward making it easier for a consumer to adapt to ereading.
Via Teleread.org

Want a Sony Reader? Join the editorial staff of a major publishing house.  Random House is the latest publishing to join the ereading ranks with Hachette, Simone & Schuster, St. Martin’s.  Each publishing house is providing eReaders to its editorial and sales staff to read galleys and other “preview material.”

I asked one insider about why the houses were all going Sony Reader and not Kindle and was given a response that in essence said that Publishers didn’t want pre published info or interoffice info on the Amazon servers. Makes sense to me.

So when will Penguin, the eternal foot dragger in the eWorld, and Harlequin, the leader in epublishing, join the ranks of the rest of the big publishing world?

Via Publishers Weekly.