MSNBC -: “The science of best sellers: If you’ve just written the Great American Novel, is it better to get a quick plug on the “Today” show or benefit from slow, steady word of mouth on the Internet? A group of researchers did a statistical analysis of Amazon.com’s best-seller list � and concluded that slow and steady is better for sales than a short, sharp shock.”
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5 Comments
This is because what sells a book is really, in the end, how good it is, and not the fancy marketing schemes. You can’t judge a book by its cover, and you can’t sell on either.
This is exactly why Palm users don’t need anything more advanced than a black-and-white Zire. My only problem with the Zire 21 is that there isn’t enough memory, or room for expansion. But all one needs to read an ebook is the text, and so it is pointless to spend money on an expensive Palm that has a lot of flash. Your money would be better used if put towards buying ebooks.
My big problem with the Zire 21 for Ebooks is the screen quality. My enjoyment of ebooks improved dramatically when I got a PDA with a backlit screen and high-resolution fonts (my original Sony CLIE T615). Yes, the text is the same, but the ease of reading the letters along with the ability to read in the dark means that ebooks start to be preferable to normal books for certain kinds of reading.
I actually think it is easier to read on the black and white LCD than on a color screen. I agree that an optional backlight would be nice, though. Maybe they can make a high-resolution black and white Palm Zire with a backlight, some more memory, and it would still have the simplicity and battery life of the Zire 21.
Sony tried a B&W Clie years ago. It bombed.
Granted, that clie was sub-par anyhow, and they really didn’t do b&w properly.
But in today’s market, why bother without color?
And if you like b&w, just set your color preference in eReader/Palm Reader to be white on black or vice versa.
That’s what I do. White (or gray at night) on black.
Two reasons to “bother” without color:
1. It is a lot cheaper. The Palm Zire 21 is much more reasonably priced than any other handheld, and does what it needs to do perfectly. I don’t know about you, but I don’t necessarily want to throw hundreds and hundreds of dollars around just to get a color screen, especially if I’m just going to set it on black and white to read ebooks anyway.
2. Batteries last a lot longer on a black and white screen. My Palm Zire 21 lasts WEEKS, whereas my cell phone, which has a color screen, can’t last more than a day or so without recharging, and my lap top only goes for something like three hours. Batteries are a joke when you aren’t dealing with just a black and white screen.
And in any case, the Sony Clie may have bombed, but the Palm Zire series has done extraordinarily well, so clearly there is a market for simple, black and white interfaces.
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