E-readers are a white elephant

The continuing belief by some publishing execs that, eventually, some mythical e-reader standard will rescue the business is misguided. In a quest for reach, newspapers have spent the last 10 years divorcing their bits from the shackles of atoms. Now that their intrinsic content is freely available via any number of outlets, there’s no easy way to recoup any money by once again locking their text behind the tyranny of tangible form.

This longing for an “iPod moment”, replicating the boost Apple’s iTunes Store gave to record labels, is understandable from dyed-in-the-wool print veterans, for whom e-readers comfortably reimagine the humble book, magazine, even newsprint. But the faith is retrograde - Amazon’s Kindle is all well and good, but do consumers really want to carry yet another gadget that does only one job, when mobile phones, netbooks and a dozen yet-to-materialise devices offer the same content and more for free? ...more