In publishing consultant Mike Shatzkin’s latest blog post, he reflects on the way that changes in the e-book market (most notably agency pricing) and the relatively similar features of most e-book readers (barring the occasional pet peeve or badly-formatted title here or there) mean there is no longer any particular advantage to the reader in buying from one e-book store over another. If I think of a book I want when I’m reading another one, I’m most likely to just buy it in the reader I’m in just because I have it open. Thanks to the...

On Booksquare, Kassia Krozser has a really interesting (and really long) essay about the social nature of reading and how to accommodate it in the Internet age. She points out that, much as e-book companies like Copia are making a big deal out of intersecting social networking with reading, our reading has almost always been “social” in the real world—we started out discussing stories around fires, and we still discuss (and review, and write fanfic of) stories even today. The big difference is that we’ve moved it on-line. Krozser spends much of the essay talking about a proposed all-inclusive system for...

Just got an email from Anthony Antolino. He was the Senior Vice President at Copia and the one primarily responsible for the shepherding of the product. According to the email he has spent the last four years working on the concept. Wonder what's going on....

We've written about Copia in the past. They are setting up a social reading platform on the web which will be combined with an ebookstore and a series of ereaders. I was very impressed with them at Tools of Change and we reported on their revised devices about a month ago. According to the Wall Street Journal they have revised their hardware platform for a second time. They will be offering, among others, a $99 5-inch color debice this fall “The iPad disrupted pricing strategy for everyone in the e-reader market, and after the price wars with Barnes and...

Copia has announced new pricing according to Publishers Weekly and they also have reconfigured their line of devices. They are now offering a 5" color LCD model for $99 and a 10.1" color LCD touchscreen/WiFi model for $299. The latter unit will support video and multimedia. There will also be a 7" color LCD non-touchscreen and two 6" b&w e-ink devices. Prices for these haven't been set. According to the article Copia's social networking platform will launch in July and the devices will be available in the fall. I've checked the Copia website and none of...