New Digital Books Offer Better Readability

Step onto a Metro train any given morning and it's easy to find people feeding their appetites for information. Commuters regularly have their faces buried in newspapers, magazines, novels -- and sometimes even Web-enabled cellphones -- during the ride to and from work.

Soon, they could be "flipping through" an electronic book reader, a cross between a handheld flat-panel monitor and a real-life book or newspaper.

Perhaps most comparable to an iPod for books, e-book readers -- a breed of upcoming devices designed to hold thousands of text files and display them at the same resolution of a printed page -- could change the landscape of how books are both purchased and read.

The readers, generally priced in the $250 to $400 range, are about the same size as a softcover novel.

Based on E Ink technology, each reader is capable of accurately mimicking the way light reflects on paper. But moving beyond the functionality of an ordinary book, the reader can enlarge text for the visually challenged as well as provide features normally found in a laptop or tablet computer, such as wireless Internet access, memory card storage and text search.

Sony and iRex Technologies are among the first to manufacture and sell eBook readers. The $350 Sony Reader ( http://www.sony.com/reader ), which is expected to hit online and retail stores in the coming months, will accommodate USB, Memory Stick and SD memory card slots and will offer both wired and wireless Internet connectivity.

IRex Technologies' iLiad Reader ( http://www.irextechnologies.com/ ), which is scheduled for release later this month, is expected to include similar features. Final pricing has yet been announced.

Both devices are expected to support multiple file formats, allowing Web sites, pictures and Adobe PDF files to be viewed and MP3 files to be played.

Like the music industry, book publishers have begun to ramp up online offerings that can be purchased and downloaded to e-book reader devices. Publishing giant Random House has already converted more than 3,000 of its titles into a digital format, selling them for $18 each, about $7 less than for the hardback version.

Once a book's text file has been downloaded, software included with the e-book reader will synchronize the images from the computer, in much the same way that data is synchronized between desktop and handheld computers.

"It could be news, articles, blogs, e-mail newsletters -- a tremendous amount is being read and there's more sense in a dedicated device," said Keith Titan, vice president of New Media for Random House Publishing.

E-book readers are new and still somewhat pricey. But unlike the music industry -- where at first underground sites were the only places to find downloadable tracks for the new MP3 players -- a growing number of books are available for purchase and download. Sony Reader users will be able to browse through volumes available from Sony's Connect eBookstore and download them to the reader.

Like music, some of the titles will face digital rights management restrictions when it comes to sharing or storing on multiple readers.

But there's also a vast offering of free titles that have moved into public domain with the expiration of their copyrights.

For users looking to download free texts to an e-book reader, Project Gutenberg ( http://www.gutenberg.org/ ) is an Internet-based effort that has placed more than 17,000 public domain books online for download -- everything from the Bible and "Hamlet" to "Don Quixote" and "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer."