A Writer Afoot

I remember standing at a publisher cocktail party years ago, talking with a publicist about electronic books, and she was shaking her head firmly, saying that e-books were still a non-issue.  At the time, I was utterly hooked on Mario for GameBoy (the original, clunky, white one) and I made the case for a reader something like that unit, with a bigger screen. Something you could hold and transport easily.   Everyone with me just shook their heads.  If I stop and think about that fat, old GameBoy, I can guess this cocktail party was about a decade ago. 

We’ve all seen the revolution coming for the past two years.  Sony pushed things along, but Kindle set the game afire, and now Barnes and Noble has joined the market with their Nook.   My oldest son, who is the kind of reader a writer dreams of, and was the  kind of geeky kid who had to have every brand-new version of Zelda the day it came out, obviously has a Kindle. He’s on his second, actually, and it’s a lovely machine.  I’ve played with the Sony reader, too, and I like it fine.  Now there is Nook, which is pretty, pretty, and not available in any meaningful way until after Christmas.  They all have their pros and cons, which you can read about in depth in this article from Wired.com.   Since getting my iPhone a few months ago, I find I want that touch screen technology on everything, and at the moment, those e-readers are pricey.

Finally, this morning Christopher Robin sent me a link to an article  firming up rumors that the Apple tablet is likely to be available in the spring.   These snippets particularly caught my eye: Continue reading The tipping point for e-readers