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"Cheap ebook reader devices ... are still a minority pursuit today"

Amazon sold over 4 million Kindles in December alone, and now sells more ebooks than paperback and hardcover combined.

With one or two exceptions, every serious reader I know has a Kindle, an iPad, or both.



I think you've forgotten just what things were like even as little as five years ago.

The rate of change in publishing today is like the web circa 1992-97.


Have you ever read ebooks on a palm? It was pretty obvious to me that that was the future. It needed someone to take the idea seriously for it to become mass market. Amazon did.

As, I should add, have O'Reilly.


Yes, I have read ebooks on a palm. And on a Psion 5 before that. (I started reading ebooks around 1996-97 and have been banging on about them ever since.)

Yes, O'Reilly. Yes also Baen (via Webscription.net). But there wouldn't be a mass ebook market at this point if the big publishing conglomerates -- who produce 80% of the books sold -- weren't on board with ebook publishing.




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