My jury still out.

Kindle – if laptop screens couldn’t kill it, will Kindle and the Sony eBook Reader be the Great Paper-Killer?

I’m thinking not. Yes, I really want a Kindle, but they just ain’t available in Canada (yet) so I went and played with the newest generation Sony Reader. Yes clear, easy to read text. Smooth fonts, non glare screen, light in weight and cool. But “it ain’t paper”. You can scroll, flip pages etc, but it’s missing the texture of how much more to read, by the thickness of the right pile, how much read, by the thickness of the left bundle.

I take zealous care of my books - their pages, even the corners of the cover. But on a beach, in the yard, I can drop a magazine as I snooze, Kindle, Sony – they’re not droppable.

And the price, for the small difference, if I wanted to carry a bundle of books these “e” readers, I’d save lots of weight. But for texture, I like a book, the art, the weight, the flipping of a real page, as I know pages. BUT back to price – a significant cost of publishing a book is printing the first copy and then the second, and so on, but the first copy …wow expensive to get to. So for Kindle books – which takes none of that financial horsepower, not even shelf space, the savings seem not there. Bravo to the author if they can reap more, but are they? Or is this really just a retail margin improvement – with loss of texture.

As for Kindle – I still really want one, and likely will jump at the chance, but like so many electronic toys, suspect I’ll tire fast and yearn to flip real pages, real fast.

You advertise to sell a product. And in retail, you even locate near and with other similar stores - to bring people into your store.

Once in your sales arena – you hope I’ll impulse buy at least another product, another thing, not just the advertised ‘special’. Properly planed, I should experience “ah-hah” moments in your establishment saying things like …”I need that”, “…and oh, I want one of them too!”

So why do you kill the opportunity. Yes on the floor crush it, stomp it. As I’m about to consider a purchase I didn’t plan, - an impulse buy – retail gold. Why do you frustrate my attempt by not having a price anywhere? Why?

Why can you build a store, inventory it, advertise it, hire people but in the end - terminate my uncontrolled emotion and preparedness to part with money, by missing the most basic point – “how much?”