Related: Chris Meadows on the written word vs. the competition in the era of the iPad and other multimedia machines.. – D.R. Tell the truth. How many print books did you read in the last week? How many e-books? In the last month? The last year? Are you reading more or less than in the past? Share the numbers in the comment area if you’d like. Here are my answers. Print books: Two books in the last week, six in the last month, and 50 in the last twelve months. E-books: One in the last week, two in the last...

The past is always instructive to understanding the present. Human beings adapt to new technologies more slowly than new technologies themselves. Inventors come up with all sorts of ideas, some work, some don’t. Sometimes brilliant ideas fall by the wayside for reasons of cost or inconvenience, or simply timing issues. E-reading is essentially a new technology in a period of tremendous and exciting change. Thousands of people and hundreds of companies are engaged in trying to figure out how people will be engaged and therefore how they can make businesses out of the broad e-reading experience in meaningful ways. I think it’s...

OK readers, it’s time to look at yourself in the mirror and tell the truth. How many print books did you read in the last week? In the last month? How about the last year? Are you reading more or less? Tell the truth. Write down your answers. Here are mine: Print books: Last week: 2 books Last month: 6 books Last twelve months: 60 books Ebooks: Last week: 1 book Last month: 2 books Last twelve months: 8 books My totals of books read are higher now than they have been in the past few years because I realized...

Such great device names: Kindle. Nook. Blio. Ectaco JetBook Lite. Spring Design Alex. Txtr. JournE. Skiff. Cool-er. Plastic Logic Que. iRex. Pixel Qi. Bookeen Cybook. Foxit eSlick. Astak EZ Reader. BeBook. Not exciting enough for you? How about the oh-so-brilliantly named Sony Reader? Most of these names are flat out horrible. What were the marketers thinking? These manufacturers are not only trying to build their brands in a crowded marketplace, they are trying to create a new market for a new generation of devices against a well established device that does not require electricity to operate, has a long history...

David Wilk, owner of BookTrix. is among our newest contributors. Welcome, David! His bio is at the end. – David Rothman Publishers and independent thinkers in many areas of the book business are beginning to look at digital versus print reading in terms of the value proposition for readers, libraries and publishers themselves. The perception and behavior of consumers will determine values in e-books and digital reading environments, and publishers ignore this reality at their own peril, as I’ve learned from Mark Coker, founder of the e-publishing platform Smashwords. Evan Schnittman, who works for Oxford University Press and writes the excellent blog Black...