We are not a fan of the Amazon Kindle around here. We like the principle of an electronic reading device, of course, but the 1980’s design of the Kindle demonstrates a complete lack of connection with the current age. But there is a device just around the corner that is not only going to give the Kindle a run for it’s money, but will thrash it with a big stick and send it to ebay without any supper.

Just go and take a look at the Readius.

• Let’s laugh at Kindle’s expense and have a look at what the Readius has to offer:
• e-book reader - of course, that’s what it is all about in the first place. A revolutionary flexible screen technology, with the good old mono screen of electronic book readers.
• Audio player - listen to music or podcasts as you read. Nice touch
• RSS - access news, information, blogs, via RSS feeds
• E-mail - both POP and IMAP e-mail support for multiple accounts
• Telephone - that’s right, it’s a mobile phone, too!

True Portability

This is the world’s first consumer device to be released with a flexible, rollable display. These displays appeared last year to some significant excitement, but it has taken a little while for manufacturers to find a proper use for them.As you can see from the Readius site (link above, the screen folds over the main body of the device, resulting in a pocket-sized gadget that, as it’s a phone, too, means less to carry around.

The Kindle is much less portable. About the only time I ever have to sit and read properly is the two-hour commute to the office (not daily, thankfully). I can picture myself popping the Readius in and out of a pocket between trains very easily.

Is there a but?

One area the Readius may fail, and fail big, is the user interface. There’s no point having all this lovelyness without the user experience of both getting your stuff onto the device - Kindle does have that sorted with its wifi access - and navigating and using it once it is there. Remains to be seen whether they have got it right.

2008 looks like it might finally be the year of the electronic book reader, which is truly going to make the publishing industry sit up and listen to the changing winds of readers. Equally important is seeing viable competition to the Kindle likely encouraging Kindle2.0 to become a significantly better product for th user. The space is hotting up nicely!

It’s all over the publishing pres - Amazon last week announced it would cough-up a not insignificant $300 million for commercial audiobook publisher Audible.

Not a particularly surprising move as Amazon have been clearly inching into the audio download market since adding mp3 downloads to its online operations. I wonder why it took them so long to get their hands on Audible as it is a much better match than the significantly more competitive music mp3 space.

Amazon’s odd little e-book reader the Kindle, will benefit from greater access to audio books, though at this time adding audio to the kindle requires a download via PC then upload again to the Kindle. I suspect we will see audiobook availability directly to the Kindle just as one can directly download e-books to the device right now. Audible also gives Amazon a direct relationship with Apple iTunes as Audible drives the content behind iTunes’ commercial audiobook store.

Audible has a nice, comfortable, traditional publishing underpinning the way it does business, which enables it to reflect the international and regional structure of the global publishing business. There are boundaries and controlled releasing of products across the world, with specific audible stores dedicated to particular countries. This fits perfectly with Amazon, of course, and provides an appropriate and familiar form of controlled distribution for the publishers.

Audible has been a great success in marketing, largely down to strategic associations such as the supply of content for iTunes. Much of Audible’s content is very poorly produced and from a producer’s viewpoint, excessive fees of up to 80% of the price point in royalties popping straight in to Audible’s pocket, could make this form of publishing a tough decision to make.

Will the new wave of new media driven independent audiobook producers be able to break the back of companies such as Audible? Perhaps not break the back, but certainly irritate their preconceptions of how the market wants to consume a product and become an increasing thorn in their side with authors discovering the online world provides them the direct power to maintain complete control and ownership of their product and still reach a global audience.