Welcome to another State of the eBook! This will be a short post this week, as it seems there will be some sort of exciting announcement this Tuesday.
Dan had an interesting comment when we were all discussing the rumored B&N reader; he said he couldn’t wait to buy one and return to his Fictionwise library. It got me thinking: as things stand now we have the Kindle store, the Sony eBook store, the Fictionwise/eReader/Barnes and Noble store, Google Books, and a number of free eBook sites. Each of them has their own device(s) that lock you into that format and platform, making it more of a commitment to choose to move to a new device.
And portability/inter-compatibility issues are only one issue. Even though the international Kindle has been released, all the books in the USA Kindle store are not available overseas. And some books are showing up in the Kindle USA store that are only available overseas. International copyrights are different in each country, creating further barriers to eBook adoption.
So obviously not only is the marketplace highly fractured, but the consumer base is as well! Everyone has their favorite store, reader, etc. So here are my questions for our readers: we can’t embed the poll, but please head over HERE, and take it! It will really help get a handle on what eBook news to cover and how to provide you with the best possible news and information!