e-Booked

Amazon's Kindle has some competition brewing as the e-book industry continues to grow and diversify. Two weeks ago, B&N launched an e-bookstore to compete with Amazon that features e-Books which can be read on most computers and wireless devices. WIRED Magazine reports that Sony will be introducing a reduced-price e-reader at the $200 price point. The newest Kindle actually got more expensive, but they reduced the price of the basic Kindle by $60, so I would look for a reduced-price (perhaps stripped-down) Kindle in the near future. Early next year, Plastic Logic will debut a Kindle competitor, which will be allied with the aforementioned Barnes & Noble site. It will reportedly boast similar features to that of the Kindle, including wireless data transmission, apparently hosted by AT&T. It remains to be seen whether Amazon is going to open up to cross-platform e-booking or if they will pursue an Apple iTunes structure and rely upon their colossal name recognition and industry-leadership to stay on top and allow them to continue to issue content via a single channel. It worked for Apple and Jeff Bezos (chairman and founder of Amazon) is nothing if not a quick study. Love it or hate it, the e-book is what's next. The more that the field diversifies, the more avenues that authors and readers have to communicate. That's a good thing for the publishing industry as a whole... assuming publishers can figure out how to make it work. I suspect that - in a familiar pattern - more consolidation will happen and new spunky and well-capitalized and internet-ready start-ups will take the place of those who fall. (That's a lot of hyphens in one sentence.) It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.