E-Reader Feeder

Imagine carrying around 150 books in your handbag! No, really. Imagine being able to change the font sizes and line spacing in your paperbook! I am not joking. What about getting thousands of free titles including Mark Twain, Shakespeare, and Chaucer without paying a cent! Still not sold?

 What was impossible five years ago is possible today, thanks to electronic book readers which promise to transform the lives of Australians (who like to read).  Hundreds of books can be stored in a device the size of a novella and read on a screen as clear as a page of fresh ink on paper.

e-Readers have so many advantages that a underground industry has emerged to import Asian and European devices after Aussie retailers showed little interest in adding e-Readers to their catalogs and line ups.

Leading technology analyst Mark Mahaney, from Citibank, recently dubbed Amazon's Kindle e-book reader "the iPod of the book world",  and the iPod is known to have accelerated the digitalization of music from records & CDs to MP3's over the past decade. Other analysts are predicting that  novels and text books will be  sold  in electronic books online in greater numbers & will become a threat to the traditional neighborhood bookshop.

From the Courier Mail, Oct 13th, After two years of waiting, Australia is finally getting Amazon's International Kindle e-book reader.
Amazon Kindle vice-president Steve Kessel confirmed the gadget's Australian arrival after the online book giant released an international version of the 6" e-ink e-book reader.

Its release is made possible by Amazon's deal with AT&T to provide mobile internet access outside the US, which will mean users can browse Amazon's Kindle website with no book download costs..

Mr Kessel said more than 200,000 books were now available for wireless download from the Kindle online store, in addition to magazines and newspapers, and Australian titles would be added in future.

"On the book side, our vision is to deliver any book ever printed in any language available in less than 60 seconds," he said. "That will definitely, over time, include local Australian published books that aren't available at the moment. We have a relationship with over 100,000 publishers."
The international version of the device will cost $US279.

So how much do eBook Readers cost in Australia? If you happen to be shopping at Dymocks, you can get a Hanlin BeBook Reader for $549.00 AUD,  the iRex iliad goes for $1,199.00  and the iRex Digital Reader costs  between $1,149.00 to 1,599.00 , depending on the model.

And what is DA Direct charging in Dec 2009?:   $349.00  for the 5" Hanlin V5 (aka BeBook Mini),   $499.00, for the 5" Cybook Opus,   $449.00 for the 6" Eco Reader (aka BeBook),   $499.00 for the 6" Cybook Gen3,   $1099.00 for the 8.1" iRex iLiad and   $1,599.00 for the 10.2" iRex Digital Reader.

All prices include the GST and are in Australian Dollars and are current of this date. Subject to change depending on the retailer.

Nov 30th, 2009 :e-Reader Feeder asked about the market in Australia and according to a "Mobile Read" forum Member: "Unfortunately the current state of e-Readers in Australia is essentially non-existent. It is sad as there is a big market, but for some unknown reason e-Readers just aren't being pushed as a product for Australia"

Another Aussie wrote "I checked with every retailer when I was looking to buy a reader for myself a few weeks ago. None of the major electronic device retailers sells e-Book readers. I got a lot of confused looks or some 'knowing' headshake (not sure what they meant with that)"  "Sony has no intention it seems to sell the reader here in Oz (I've asked them and got a non-committal reply) but that makes sense as they have their own e-Book shop and the geographical restriction seem to be a bit of a nightmare."

So if the shopping malls do not carry e-Readers in 2009, buyers can search on the web:

Two recommended sites that cater to the Aussie market are DADirect (www.dadirect.com) and www.ebookbop.com.au. "I can't speak personally in regards to their customer service but all of those who have bought from DADirect appear REALLY happy with the service"

Dealsdirect sells them on their website but they have to import them as well. Dymocks sells the Hanlin  BeBook e-Reader as well as several iRex models on their website.

Buying directly from the manufacturer is also a option. Kindle has received a lot of publicity lately as Amazon.com launched the international Kindle recently. Aussies can have it shipped directly from the US website but can be assured they will be able to download books with whispernet wireless technology in their own country and, according to Amazon, " in over 100 countries around the world"

The BeBook can also be imported from Holland and Bookeen ships their Cybooks from France. There are also many American online retailers happy to sell all the various e-Readers to the Australian market. (more in future articles).

The main problem with ordering overseas (as many locals know) is getting good customer service & support. If you have a problem with your device you might have to ship it back for repairs and wait weeks for assistance. Check with your e-Reader manufacturer if there is local distribution channel that can provide local customer service & repairs.

Note: If we can find more information about local sales & service in Australia we will post another article.

With the success of the Kindle in the US, Australia is one of over 100 countries that will now receive wireless coverage and sales support from Amazon. Two years after launching Amazon's first version, the Kindle 2 is capable of receiving mobile signals in every continent and making it the number one choice of readers & world travelers alike.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder and chief executive, said that the Kindle was the company's bestselling product, but he would not disclose sales figures. He expects sales of e-books to overtake those of physical books. Amazon sells 48 Kindle copies for every 100 physical copies of books that it offers in both formats. Five months ago it was selling 35 Kindle copies per 100 physical version.

Sales of the Kindle will help to push Amazon, which began as a bookselling website 15 years ago, past a significant threshold as an online global superstore in the current quarter. Worldwide sales of its traditional staples - books, music and films - will be surpassed for the first time by sales of general merchandise, from jewellery and clothing, to consumer electronics including the Kindle.

The e-reader market is still small but growing fast. E-book sales totalled $US81.5 million in the first half of the year, up from $US29.8 million in the first six months of 2008, according to the Association of American Publishers. According to Forrester Research, e-reader sales in the United States will total three million this year, with Amazon selling 60 per cent and Sony 35 per cent.

The Australian, March 2, 2009.  IT'S been touted for years -- the era of the e-book -- a portable electronic reader that would make the contents of your local bookstore and newsagent available at the flick of a switch. But while TV and the internet have come to mobiles, the e-book still remains a product of the future for the vast majority of the Australian market.

In the US, online book giant Amazon has been pioneering the electronic book with its Kindle reader, which can carry 1500 downloaded books and uses a phone network to deliver purchases wirelessly.  A couple of weeks ago it unveiled the international Kindle 2 to much fanfare -- but the product itself remains in the realms of niche electronics.

As other media make the transition to the digital world, first through the internet and increasingly through 3G phones, just why books have failed to follow the same path is open to debate.

With no single platform for publishers to focus on, he believes there is little incentive to push hard on digital delivery, although most e-readers on the market, from Kindle, to Sony, Netronix and iRex now use the E-ink technology that only consumes power when pages are turned. Surrounding the debate is the issue of foreign copyright and how digital rights management might be applied to the publishing industry.

For publishers, e-books remains a US-centric model and so potentially lucrative markets such as Australia are being left behind. But it is not just authors who are missing out.

Australian newspapers and magazines are also trapped under a digital glass ceiling. In the US, Kindle also sells digital subscriptions for newspapers and magazines, which are then delivered in full format to readers each day via the Sprint phone network. None of Australia's newspapers are available for digital subscription on e-Readers.

Dymocks launched its e-reader and e-book service 15 months ago, but the service is reliant on visiting a store or downloading books via the internet and then transferring them to the reader. Most retailers and book publishers are reluctant to embrace digital e-Readers and so book lovers must wait.

The era of the popular e-reader in Australia remains some way off.

Browsing through Sony Australia's website, I failed to find any digital e-Book Readers anywhere. Based on this and what some Aussies have told me, I might rush to judgment that Sony is not selling any of it's five Reader models directly in the land down under, neither the 505 digital book, the 700 series, the 300 Pocket edition, the Touch edition or the brand new Daily Reader are sold in any Sony Centers or in any of  their hundreds of distributors' stores.

Canada, the UK and United States all have Sony e-Readers, not just online but in their stores, so why not Australia?  For now, Australians will have to import them from Sony.com directly if they have their hearts set on a Sony brand. Whether it is easier to order from the US or another country like the UK, I am not sure. But cheer up, I am sure Sony Readers will reach our stores sometime next year in 2010.

From Australia, Dec 3rd, 2009: The News Corp, controlled by Mr Murdoch, has yet to release any content for eReaders such as daily news subscriptions. When questioned about what he thought about digital publishing, he said:

"Already we provide news to our readers through websites, email alerts, blogs, twitter, and podcasts. Now we are looking at e-readers. We have no intention of getting into the hardware business. But we have every intention of promoting more choice for our consumers and more competition among distributors by pursuing ways to help us deliver news and information as cheaply as possible and over as many platforms as we can"

The shape of the News Corporation pay-wall plans is fundamentally clear, I think, although doubtless there will be bells and whistles and surprises further down the track. It seems the plan includes subscription packages of content, tightly targetted to the readers’ interests, bundled with an e-reader.

My speculation is that when there is enough a consumer base, possibly in 2010, daily newspapers will not only launch Kindle or other eReader monthly subscription packages, they might even sell a yearly package together with the device itself as does the New York Times in America