I do agree that a subscription business model might actually emerge again, with the introduction of digital readers. The cool thing about this, is that we will actually see this play out as we speak. This is not a faraway future, this is literally happening today.

d. :-)

I keep quoting you about the spend increase, as you “warned” me early on, when people pitch me the $9.99 book price.

- YES! but you buy more than twice the amount mate! :-)

Cheers
d.

The Kindle actually does include a dictionary, but it seems more of a “Reading a book” add-on to me, and less of a Digital Magazine feature. It also includes the opportunity to connect to outside links (such as deployed in books like yours and mine), which is not a bad feature at all.

This linking feature of course only work, when and if magazines like the Economist start aggressively linking out – and if not that, then cross linking to other articles. They are not there yet.

I’ll endeavor to have a great week in NY. Cold. But GREAT! :-)

cheers
d.

For example, reading Ulysses, every 3d word could be hyperlink’d to explain something that I don’t know. In such way the e-reader would add value over the paper version.

But where then is the difference to the WWW you might ask. Also, adding such hyperlinks might remove that feeling of having accomplished a task as you felt yourself seeking. Since everything will be interconnected I mean.

So maybe instead of hyperlinks, the ability to doubleclick a word and get a Wikipedia or normal human translation for it when you really need to.

And if I do that more than 10 times per page on Ulysses the e-book self-destroys and auto-enrolls me in evening adult school, English class.

Have a good week in NY!

I wrote about the a similar topic a few months ago:
http://eham1906.blogspot.com/2009/11/down-with-newspapers.html

I see a prescription model as the savior for magazines and newspapers. I would be willing to pay $20 per month for unlimited Kindle wireless access to every magazine and newspaper in the U.S.