Ray Hendon
Reading books on a computer has a long history, but in 2006 when Sony introduced its Reader to American consumers, a revolution of the reading habits of Americans began .
With a device dedicated to reading electronic texts with a (then) new process of E-Ink display, it was possible to read indoors or out, even in direct sunlight. And, it was possible to carry the reader with you with a minimum of hassle. This was the entry of eReading into the mainstream.
The picture at right is of the original Sony PRS-500 which was made available in the United States in September 2006 and priced as $329.99. Books for the Reader were also offered in Sony’s bookstore. The screen of the PRS 500 was six-inches, and sported a 4-level grey scale screen at 800 x 600 pixels.
The original Reader weighed 1.2lbs, could hold about 500 books, and read an impressive list of file types: PDF, TXT, RTF, BMP, EPUB and others. The ePub file is now the most prominent file type for electronic books, but the existing Sony Reader continues to read a large number of file types.
Sales of the PS500 were slim by today’s standards. In December 2008, Sony disclosed that since the device launched in October 2006 it had sold 300,000 units worldwide . After the first couple of years, especially after the Kindle was introduced in late 2007, sales for all e-book readers worldwide grew to 12.8 million in 2010 and 23.2 million in 2011.
Technical progress of E-Ink readers has continued improving since its first introduction. For comparison, today’s best E-Ink screens such as the Kindle Paperwhite have 16-level gray scale, weigh 7.5 ounces, and supports a 800x600 resolution. Nooks’s high-end model weighs less than seven ounces. Most of the new Readers can now hold 1000 books and the battery life has been extended to four and even eight weeks, depending of use patterns.
Prices of eReaders today start at around $70 and extend up to $120 to $140, depending of features.
The pictures below are of current models of E-Ink screen readers. The Amazon Kindles are shown at left. 
Barnes and Noble Nooks are to the right.
The future for E-Ink screen Readers is not optimistic. Sales have been falling annually since their peak year of 2011. From the 23.2 million sold that year they fell to 14.9 million in 2012 and are expected to lose around 20% a year until 2014, where they are expected to be about 5.3 million units.
The poor outlook for E-Ink readers in no way translates to a poor outlook for eReading, however. The shift from reading only paper editions to electronic editions is continuing. The dollar sales of eBooks in 2011 was estimated by BookStats at $1.97 billion. This was almost 16% of all trade book sales. (Trade books include the major categories of adult fiction and non fiction, but exclude children’s books and textbook sales).
The 2011 figure was up from $838 million in 2010 where the sales of eBooks accounted for 6.7% of all trade dollar sales that year.
From Amazon’s perspective, the growth is even more pronounced. Amazon began selling hardcover and paperback books in July 1995. Twelve years later in November 2007, Amazon introduced the Kindle and began selling Kindle books.
By July 2010, Kindle book sales had surpassed hardcover book sales, and six months later, Kindle books overtook paperback books to become the most popular format on Amazon.com. Today, less than four years after introducing Kindle books, Amazon.com customers are now purchasing more Kindle books than all print books - hardcover and paperback - combined.
The growth of eReading, though, has not been particularly kind to devices using E-Ink technology. People reading electronically are switching to the internally illuminated screens of tablets, smartphone and laptops.
The graph below shows how eReading is accomplished through 2012. The figures in the graph represent the percentage of all electronic reading done in 
the time period by each device. The Kindle Fire, Nook HD , Android tablets, smartphones and the iPad, are increasingly the most likely way of reading electronic editions of books.
Tablet eReading
For the last couple of years, tablets seem to be taking the lion’s share of eReading device sales. The versatility of the iPad and its competitors has overwhelmed the E-Ink devices. The reality of it is easy to understand. A tablet can surf the internet, do email, show photographs and graphics in full color and play movies at full speed. But they can also provide a good eReading experience. All the major eBook sellers provide apps for tablets that can read the appropriate format and read it as well or better than a dedicated reading 
devices.
The iPad Mini and iPad are shown at right. The Mini starts at $329 and the iPad at $399, $499 and $599, depending on screen resolution, processor speed, memory and connectivity options.
Contrast these abilities to that of a dedicated eReader, and it is easy to see why a consumer would prefer a tablet over a dedicated eReader. Why carry two things when one will do the work of both.
Google’s Nexus 7 tablet is shown below. It is priced at $199 for the base model.
Three of the Kindle Fire tablets are shown below. Barnes and Noble also sells several tablets that double as eReaders for its content.
One lesson learned during the years from 2006 through 2012 is that the eReading industry is far from static. Manufacturers of all stripe have taken aim at it, as have the major book sellers. And now that eReading is indisputably engrained in Americans’ reading habits, the pace of innovation and price competition can only be expected to grow even more fierce.
This is good news for those of us who enjoy reading.
The next article in this introductory series will tackle way of combining the software and hardware options that are best for your personal needs for reading books, magazines and other digital content.
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