December 22nd, 2009 
admin Sources say the device could be launched as early as next month. It would follow the recent United States launch of the Sony eBook Reader, a machine the size of a hardback that stores digital copies of up to 80 books and lasts 7,500 pages on a single charge.
Online bookseller Amazon intends to unveil a wireless electronic book reader — think of it as a literary iPod — that has United Kingdom publishers in a frenzy to digitize their entire range of titles.
Amazon is currently keeping its electronic book, believed to be named “Kindle” and priced at more than 400 U.S. dollars a secret and refused to comment on its existence. But U.S. industry sources are predicting an October launch for a device that could do for reading what the iPod did for mobile music.
“With Amazon and Sony both reported to be planning electronic book reader launches in the UK, we are highly positive about the market for digital books,” said Jeremy Ettinghausen, digital director of Penguin.”
A source close to Bloomsbury, the publisher of the Harry Potter novels, said the company was also keen to adapt literary works to the new technology.
Ettinghausen said the public’s appetite for digital content, coupled with a wireless electronic book, will allow booksellers to offer instant digital downloads of all types of literature in cafｅs, airports and, of course, in bookshops. Penguin has begun the process of digitizing all its books and already offers a limited selection of digital downloads from its website.
Although transferring content into electronic format has resulted in heavy losses for record labels as a result of widespread piracy, Ettinghausen is confident that electronic books will not replace the paper variety but will whet the public’s appetite for reading.
He said paper books have an intrinsic appeal to their owners and also cites the way in which the start of Amazon’s Internet sales service in the 1990s preceded the opening of huge new London bookstores such as Borders in Oxford Street and Waterstones in Piccadilly. Industry predictions at the time had been that internet sales would force high street bookstores to close.
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