A New Entry into e-Books

Last month, a new player potentially emerged in the e-book arena. It was a surprise to me, perhaps not to all of you, but Discovery, a vast organization in the communications arena, which includes the Discovery Channel, was awarded a patent on March 6th.

The Patent Office stated that it was an invention for, "a new way to distribute books and other contextual information to bookstores, libraries and consumers." This implies a similar "readership" as other electronic books such as Amazon's Kindle and the Sony e-Book.

However, Discovery's approach is a bit different; it claims to be more of an electronic library. Yes it would use a portable "electronic viewer" and a portable "book-shaped reading device", but it uses a video signal format that will allow both sending and receiving at the same time. Thus, they promise to "revolutionize the distribution of books".

The question then becomes, are they more interested in the transport of files rather than the actual reading (in a 1 on 1 sense) of the document? Looking at who they are, it may be the case. On the other hand is distribution the key to a revenue stream, or is the reading device?

This is all very interesting and worth watching.

Note: Please see my previous postings on the Kindle dated February 7th, and February 13th.