e-Book Reader Wars...The Return of the Red Eye

The manufacturers of eBook readers are suddenly very serious about the concept of the eBook and the machines we will want to read them on. Sony has taken an aggressive stance with the announcement of a $199.00 machine while cutting the price of titles to a base level of $9.99. As usual for us poor Brits I dare say we are going to have to wait to see these machines. This is the third new e-reader announcement in under a week and it seems that reduced footprint is the order of the day with Merlin Digital also announcing a small reader. It will be interesting to see how the reduced footprint of both the Sony and the Merlin models is received in comparison to the cumbersome Kindle. Smaller machines have their benefits and may well appeal to holiday readers and those who want to read on the go. With a plethora of machines hitting the market and publishers finally waking up to the revenue stream available - all though they still struggle with marketing and pricing – it would seem that the next twelve months are going to be very interesting.