Though they are an improvement on a computer screen, e-book readers remain crude simulacra of books.
Many have predicted the eventual demise of physical books, as e-book readers and e-book demand soars.
Currently there are about 20 dedicated e-book readers on sale or in development.
The bookstore giant is losing market share to Amazon's online sales and to e-book readers such as Amazon's Kindle.
Like many of the e-book readers that followed, it used e-ink - an innovation developed by a US company of the same name.
You can see the logic: the company jumped into hardware with the Kindle e-book readers and then moved into tablets with the Kindle Fire.
FORBES: Amazon: Entering Phone Market A Very Bad Idea, Analyst Says
Peruvemba expects flexible plastic displays to get larger in coming years, to the point that they can be used in e-book readers and laptop computers.
The key suppliers of digital e-book readers have been cagey about revealing how many devices they have manufactured and how many they have actually sold.
According to recently released Accenture research, tablets are growing faster than e-book readers, Blu-Ray players, mobile phones, smart phones, netbooks or any other gizmos on the market.
Among other factors, Squali is bullish on the Kindle: he estimates that the company sold 4 million of the e-book readers in Q4, with production of 5 million units.
And tablet computers, GPS navigation devices and e-book readers.
The OEM business is expected to remain strong for the rest of the year, driven by new product cycles from manufacturers of smartphones, tablets, e-book readers and other mobile Internet devices that use flash-based storage solutions.
More than 20 million flexible plastic displays are on the market today, according to Sriram Peruvemba, vice-president of marketing for E Ink, the company that developed the low-power display technology for the Amazon Kindle and many other e-book readers.
"While book sales usually peak in the run up to Christmas, the move by consumers to use traditional book retailers simply for window shopping before purchasing online at discount prices has seriously impacted this sector, which has already suffered considerably from the growing popularity of e-book readers, " she said.
We've already told you about Orizon from Bookeen, the RCA Lexi, iriver Story, the Jinke SiPix readers, Hanvon WISEreader, the Cool-er readers from Interead, the Ocean and Tidal series from Copia, and a pair of E6 and E10 e-book readers from industry heavyweight Samsung.
But nonbusiness consumers, take heart: Cheaper, book-focused e-readers are also likely to be revamped soon.
For book publishing companies, e-readers present another way to sell their products and a way to get things to print faster, as an e-book can be distributed faster than a paper copy.
To Amazon, the devices are just delivery channels for more content and the e-reader push towards lower and lower price will allow the company to throw e-readers in with the delivery of a book or a large enough commitment to a content subscription.
Ms. Buchanan, co-author of the bestseller "The Daring Book for Girls, " says she set out to create a multimedia story that took advantage of the protean nature of the latest e-readers, which can function as a book one moment and a photo album or movie player the next.
The evolution will likely continue, with book-selling companies getting their own e-readers, publishers and media outlets adjusting to the change and new technologies emerging.
"Amazon has built a very strong relationship with e-book buying consumers that were the first wave of adopters of electronic readers, " says Epps.
Many publishers are setting up their own e-book stores to help them promote the works of new authors and remind readers about the back catalogues of established writers.
Some are worried that these e-readers and the Internet will markedly change the newspaper, magazine and book industries, if not make them extinct altogether.
The first Kindle, now available only on eBay or other outlets where antique hardware languishes, is a sloping wedge that's wider on its left side, which allows readers to wrap their hands around the e-reader like a paperback book with its cover folded back around the spine.
The major new players in e-book publishing Amazon, Apple and Google can easily track how far readers are getting in books, how long they spend reading them and which search terms they use to find books.
E-readers have been gaining traction because they're easier to maneuver and carry than a book or broadsheet newspaper.
As with most professions, the book business is changing rapidly with the advent of the Internet and new technology like e-readers.
She said the popularity of e-readers and tablet computers as Christmas presents had also helped to make January Surrey's busiest e-book month so far, with 2, 469 e-book loans.
应用推荐