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By David Rothman

Chris CobbsWhen a middle-aged newspaper guy comes out and proclaims a love of electronic books, it’s almost a man-bites-dog story.

This week Chris Cobbs at the Orlando Sentinel revealed that he’s “read more than 100 electronic books on a variety of devices—laptops and PDAs—in the past few years and would like to see the digital format succeed.”

As for the Sony Reader review over which the quoted headline appeared, Cobbs says, in part:

As a member of the minority who actually reads e-books with enthusiasm, I welcome the arrival of the Sony Reader, the first new dedicated electronic text device in several years.

The Sony Reader has some major pluses — it’s the size of a quality paperback, it stores about 80 books in its internal memory and can hold hundreds more with a plug-in memory card. It also has a long-running battery that can endure 7,500 page turns before it needs recharging.

All this, however, isn’t likely to make the Sony Reader the product to do for books what the Apple iPod did for music: Make it a near must-have item for millions.

Working against the Reader are a high price ($349), a relatively thin digital library shelf of titles and the absence of a backlight that would enable on-the-go types to read in dim or dark conditions…

I don’t think a product like the Sony Reader can gain mass acceptance unless its price falls dramatically to about $100 and Sony can offer a cornucopia of titles to appeal to widely varying tastes.

Right now, there are thousands of e-books priced from about $5 to $25 for the Sony Reader and other gadgets, but the list is tiny compared with printed matter in a good bookstore.

There is also an excellent range of out-of-copyright books — most literary classics — that are available free, but Shakespeare and Dickens aren’t likely to tempt millions of readers to switch to the electronic format.

Also working against the Sony Reader is its screen. While it is sharp and easy to view in a well-lighted setting, like you’d want for reading a regular book, the Reader is impossible to see in a dark room.

In my view, it would greatly benefit from a backlit screen like those on a laptop or cell phone to make it viewable on a plane or in other poorly lighted spots where the peripatetic reader might venture. I’d definitely sacrifice some battery life for an illuminated screen.

 
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