So in other words, you're nowhere near the typical consumer in this regard.I buy an average of one iTunes album a week, and an average of two books a week. Most of the books I buy are "substantial" - literature, history, scholarship, etc.
And you're now even in a smaller minority of people willing to pay twice for the same thing, but clearly would return to the paper copy wherever possible.Ideally I'd like to have electronic copies and paper copies of the same books, so I could carry the Reader around and continue where I left off in the paper copy while in a waiting room, etc.
You, like most heavy readers, have a clear preference for an actual book and use an eBook device only where it is more convenient than having an actual book--which boils down to when you're traveling. The eBook doesn't replace books and doesn't really justify its existence--and is one more thing to carry. You don't really picture anyone curling up with a Kindle loaded up with Chaucer by the fire.
An eBook device is an evolutionary dead end and a unitasker to boot. It could easily be replaced by a full-featured multifunction device like a tablet, notebook, iPhone, or PDA.
And such an interpretation is effete superiority. Silicon Valley is an affluent area that probably has more Kindle customers per capita than just about anywhere else in the country.I see enough people browsing around at bookstores to know that Jobs' claim that nobody reads is ignorant Silicon Valley prejudice.
That doesn't change the simple fact that eBook devices are a solution looking for a problem. They don't track with modern life--novel-format prose has ebbed.
In the bookstore, how much of that audience is there to pick up a book of prose (not DVDs or magazines or computer/home guides)? How much of that small fraction is composed of people under 35?
An eBook reader doesn't do anything useful that a subscription blog or an Internet content delivery system couldn't replace on any net-connected device bigger than a cell phone. Coupled with the fact that people truly don't chug through entertainment prose in printed form nearly as much, it's got a narrow market that doesn't invite a lot of competition.
Coffee table books, comics, periodicals, how-to guides (gardening, home projects, etc.), reference books, and capital-L literature don't mesh with an eBook format. It only really works for the novel-format (be it fiction or nonfiction), and apart from the small set of voracious readers, it doesn't really serve much of a purpose.