It’s always the way when you’re in the middle of launching of a new title, something is just guaranteed to come along which suddenly grabs the public’s attention and sends the subject matter to the top of the agenda.
In the last few days there’s been a lot of talk about Amazon’s decision to remove some books from Kindle devices and refund users. Now, Kindle isn’t yet available in the UK but the decision to remove the titles (it seems the publishers didn’t have copyright clearance for then) will, or at least should, affect how consumers around the world see their relationships with companies in a world of DRM-protected content.
The attractiveness of a web-enabled ebook reader such as the Kindle isn’t, in my opinion, proven and a lot of people could be put off by the sudden realisation that the Kindle’s ability to download books can be used to inverse effect.
Will this push consumers towards readers without any web connectivity? As covered in our news pages, recent weeks in the UK have seen two new entrants to compete with the Sony Reader which went on sale last September.
After years of being told the age of the ebook was just around the corner, are we finally witnessing its arrival?
