eBook Readers - will they "rekindle" the love for books?

Amazon recently launched Kindle - 2 their new and improved e-book reader. The first version was launched in 2007 and was an improvement over the one launched by Sony a couple of years ago. This is one device that promises to be useful and can change the way people read, bring them back to books, rather than "random" content on the net.

Some key points about Kindle-2:

• Costs, $359 and is wireless enabled to download content (nay books!)
• Comes with a wireless subscription and you pay for the book and not the number of bytes you download
• Can hold more than 1500 books
• One battery charge allows for two weeks of reading!
• The screen is not back lit, has a white hue background much like paper book pages
• Users can think of a book to read, download it in a few minutes and get started
• Built to resemble a conventional book, with a leather cover, its a "conservative" device and gives comfort to all, unlike many devices which only geeks are comfortable with

Wireless Kindles will push the mobile application industry to build eReaders for mobile phones. Especially for information (unlike content!) like travel brochures and "rough guides" that can be easily read on mobile phones.

Kindle promises to restore sanity to reading habits. Arguably, the Internet with its hyper-links has facilitated random reading and given great flexibility of being able to find out what any new word means by clicking on it and reading about it on Wikipedia. Hey, but this takes people all around the Internet, often forgetting where they had started.

In discussions 8-10 years ago, on whether the Internet will take over reading habits and sound the death knell for paper books, I always argued that this wont happen until the PC/laptop becomes so convenient that you can use it like a paper book - lying in bed or on the couch, reading away for hours! I don't know what the statistics are on "reading postures" - but I am pretty certain a lot of reading is done in the loo and in bed or on the couch, in the horizontal position! The Kindle will facilitate this much like the paper book and help readers read in postures and positions they are most comfortable with.

I even see my kids drawing and writing in the horizontal position these days! So surely the Kindle will succeed and rekindle the fire for books (in the horizontal position). Here's hoping the Kindle will be the iPod of the book and newspaper industry, while it retains its old world links with paper books and its price falls below $100 soon!