I read a LOT of paperbacks and I live in a small third world country, so finding new stock at a lot of bookshops can be difficult. Being able to buy books conveniently off the internet would really be a live saver for me however I think the real way they will take off will be via non-fiction where a single reader is really competing with 200+ heavy reference books which suddenly makes it VERY attractive. The Kindle’s searching ability would be great for this if Amazon’s business model wasn’t so insane.


All the lawyers I know go through several forests worth of paper every year reading contracts, making changes and re-printing the contracts etc. Get them comfortable with the technology and the potential cash savings alone will convert half the legal profession in 6 months.


As for the manufacturing issues: The Chinese factories make a lot of small batch run products already anyway. One more won’t matter and a lot of the internal ebook reader technology is off the shelf stuff anyway.


Finally I think that the people who rave the feeling and smell of paper books don’t read a lot of second hand novels. Paper absorbs all sorts of things from the environment around it. A book that was previously owned by a smoker can be a really smelly thing, and I don’t even want to think about second-hand porn novels …