paidContent:UK’s Robert Andrews picks up a Radio 5 Live discussion on e-readers and shares his own view: that single function readers are no magic pill for publishers.
An ‘e-reader’ is a mere neologism – conceived by those who seek to replicate an old, physical medium in modern, electronic form. But newspapers have spent the last 15 years divorcing their content from the physicality of their origin medium – not only does charging on what looks like a plastic newspaper fly in the face of that strategy, it’s also going to be rather difficult when few mechanisms beyond Kindle’s Whispernet truly exist – in the rush to build e-readers, manufacturers are all pulling in their own direction.
For an industry that is trying to get people to pay for its product, limiting the ways it sells it seems like the worst idea possible.