Stephen King might be called an early adopter if it comes to digital publishing and e-books. As early as March 2000 King published the story “Riding the Bullet” as an e-book that could be downloaded from the Web onto hand-held devices or computers.

When the second generation of Amazon’s Kindle went on sale in February 2009, King wrote the novella “Ur” exclusively the Kindle platform.

So far “Ur” earned him $80.000 for a work of three days, as he points out: “I didn’t do ‘Ur’ for money. I did it because it was interesting. [...] It took three days, and I’ve made about $80,000. You can’t get that for short fiction from Playboy or anybody else. It’s ridiculous.”

Read entire post …

And here you go, just another Android tablet. The Next2, will sell for $200 and you can find all the details at their www.nextbookusa.com.

“If you like reading books, browse Internet, listen to music, view your favorite photo albums or videos, Next2 is your new best friend. Its sleek design, touch screen feature, 7 inches color display, WiFi, is just amazing. Next2 comes with a free, preloaded 25 books. [...]When fully charged, you can read up to 10 hours. Nextbook now partnered with Borders.com. [...] Its high resolution screen gives you sharp images especially when playing HD video. You can also find more fun with third party Apps available.”
Read entire post …

Both, the Kindle 3 WiFi and the Kindle 3 3G + WiFi are back in stock on Amazon.com. You can order a Kindle today and will receive it within a day or in about 5 days depending on shipping method and your actual location

Kindle and Kindle DX

Kindle (Free 3G + Wi-Fi, 6″, White or Graphite): $189

Kindle (Wi-Fi, 6″, Graphite): $139

Kindle DX (Free 3G, 9.7″, Graphite): $379

Kindle DX, either 2nd generation white or Graphite with a newer screen, are also in stock and available for immediate shipping.

With the DX the question is, why is the demand for the DX lower compared to the Kindle 3? One reason could be that with Kindle 3 WiFi out it’s inevitable that at some point Kindle DX WiFi will follow and perhaps with a price reduction?
On the other hand it may just be the price that let more buyers turn to the Kindle 3, since not everyone wants to pay nearly $400 for an e-reader – for just $100 more you can get an iPad.

A third reason could be, that from what I saw in forums throughout the web, most buyers of Kindle e-readers are women who are more interested in romance and other novels and thus are satisfied with a small device that fits into their purses. The larger DX is just more suitable for readers who also read a lot of PDFs and magazines.

There is a video on youtube where an e-reader owner compares different e-reader displays with an airport approach chart. He has got actually a Youtube Channel with even more videos.

Here is the video that shows 5 e-readers displaying the same chart. In this comparison there is one flaw, when he says you can not turn the Kindle DX to landscape mode in order to zoom the shown pdf. Actually you can by just turning the DX and then it would show the graphics in a much more zoomed state than any of the other readers.

Over at TheDigitalReader you find a fine review of the new Spring Design Alex eReader.

First the conclusion: the Alex e-reader is a fine device, which can bring you a lot of fun but is quite expensive with its price of $400.

• Browsing: You can browse with just the LCD screen or you can display a web page on both the LCD and e-ink screen. You can not interact with the page as shown on the epaper screen.

• Email:  The email client is not that good, and only works on the LCD screen.

• Apps: You can install third party apps on the Alex. Not all will work and you can only use them on the LCD screen so far. Some will not work, and you can’t use any of them on the epaper screen just like on an Android phone.

Read entire post …

The newest e-reader to join the league is the EER-051D from Paradigm Shift. The Paradim Shifts EER-051D has a 5-inch color screen, and an FM tuner along with the usual MP3 player, plus a photo viewer, 2GB of internal memory and an SD card expansion slot for additional memory. The device supports most e-book formats (ANSI , UNICODE TXT ,DOC,PDF,HTML,FB2 ,PDB, EPUB, including DRM-enabled ePub books).

The EER-051D unlike most e-readers on the market instead of e-Ink  features a full color TFT display with an enhanced contrast panel. It is designed for ease of reading and long battery life.

In addition the EER-051D is an Mp3 audio and Mp4 video player, has a built in FM radio and photo viewer and has 2GB built in memory plus an SD card memory expansion slot. Proposed MSRP: $129.95