Electronic Publishing: remove the technology barriers to reach the consumers.

I feel that the electronic publishing is on the verge of its dawn. It won’t take long before we will be able to start publishing via internet, no relaying any longer on the paper. If it will be the best solution I can’t answer, but I think it will be a way to change the rules.

One of the biggest barrier, however, can be seen in the technology. I am not speaking of the thousands of softwares that can be used to create an ebook; I’m talking about the barrier defined by the hardware.

The eInk technology is definitely a jump forward, but the two most known eBook readers using that technology are the real gap! The Sony Reader and the Philips iLiad are undoubtfully amazing machines, but they are creating the gap, their price is so high to make them something for few.

The Sony places his Reader at 300$, while Philips has gone for a more broad market presenting iLiad, an hardware not only for reading, but for writing also, but the price flies up to 700$. You can easily understand why the underground is not packed with people taking these machines in their hand.

We are still tied to the concept of book with paper pages, with a physical appearance in our bookshelves. This is already a huge gap to cross, but if the alternatives are so expensive, the resulting market will be such a small niche that the early adopters will still have to wait long time…