We’ll start with Cool-er, the little engine that could.
Cool-er says color ereaders in early 2010
Cool-er has managed to sell a million pounds worth of eReaders and believe they can overtake Sony in sales within a year.
Mirror UK has 2 articles talking about it -
Neil Jones, the CEO: We have some really sexy ideas that we’re going to talk about in January (CES) …
(That will) set us well apart from the competition.
The articles hint at an early 2010 Cool-er that will have -
- A color screen.
- Touch capability.
- 3G wireless.
Next, it’s Time with big eReader plans.
Time want to create their own eReader
NBC Bay Area found an internal Time Inc. document that shows Time will be unveiling its own eReader plans within 3 months -
The Time Inc. presentation, titled “New Platforms & Business Models for Publishers” indicates Time plans to launch something within the next three months.
It mentions that Portable digital reading devices are emerging as a big publishing opportunity.
It then concludes that Time Inc. and other partners should form a new, jointly owned company … will hold “our destiny with readers, advertisers and distributors … in our hands.”
Time thinks the key components to the winning model are -
- Online store like Amazon.com.
- Product Design, including research, design innovation, manufacturing.
- Consumer Facing Brand.
Time’s official statement:
We’re speaking with a number of hardware and software companies as well as other content companies about various projects
The document also indicates that Time has been talking with magazine publishers including Conde Nast, Meredith and Hearst.
We might very well see the Hulu of publishing, and it might be more than just a website.
Apple pretending it doesn’t care about eBooks
It’s difficult to take Steve Jobs’ ‘reading doesn’t matter, ereaders don’t matter’ statements seriously when Apple keep adding Book Apps and Comics to its App Store.
NY Times talked to Steve Jobs whether his stance on eReaders had changed from ‘no one reads any more’ -
He said that Apple doesn’t see e-books as a big market at this point, and pointed out that Amazon.com, for example, doesn’t ever say how many Kindles it sells. “Usually, if they sell a lot of something, you want to tell everybody.”
However, take a look at the actual eBook App figures in the App store, and it certainly seems like e-books are a big market.
Filed under: books Tagged: | future of publishing
