Ebook readers appear to be on the minds of a lot of people this holiday season. The Barnes & Noble Nook won’t be shipping until January 4 now because of unexpected demand. And Sony can’t guarantee shipment of their new Sony Reader Daily Edition for Christmas. If you’re going to buy an e-reader for yourself or someone else, you need to act fast.

The popularity of ebooks is definitely on the rise. There are a lot of newcomers to the world of ebooks and they are finding it a daunting task to choose a device that best fits their needs. I have been getting a lot of questions about which ebook reader is best. While I can’t speak for everyone, I can give some practical advice for those seeking to make ebooks a part of their daily lives.

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With the holiday season in full swing I thought it might be a good idea to give a quick overview of some of the most popular ebook readers on the market. I’ve included some important specs and the price of each unit.

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One of the features touted by Barnes & Noble about their new Nook ebook reader is that users can share ebooks with others. If I have an ebook, for example, that I loved and told you that you have to read it, I could send you that ebook via my Nook to your Nook, computer or mobile device with the B&N ebook software installed. The catch is that you can only ‘keep’ my ebook for 14 days (starting when you open the ebook) and during that time, I can’t read the ebook.

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Today I’m posting my first video. I decided to do a short comparison (about 8 minutes) of the experiences I’ve had with different ebook readers. I talk about the Sony PRS-500, PRS-300 Pocket Edition, and iPhone.

Again, this is my first video attempt for this blog. Please ignore my crappy editing skills. And when comparing the sizes between the 500 and 300 I stumble around – let’s chalk it up to stage fright. Yes, the 500 is bigger than the 300, but not by much.

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For many people, it may seem wrong that one can get rich by giving stuff away for free. This is exactly what one science fiction writer and digital evangelist is doing – and he’s the traditional publishing industry’s worst nightmare. I’m referring to Cory Doctorow,  a fellow at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the co-editor of the blog BoingBoing and a science fiction author who sells and gives away his novels for free.

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At my local B&N store there has been a lot of interest in the new e-reader Nook. I’ve heard more about this device since it has been announced than I ever did about any of the Sony Readers or the Amazon Kindle. Something about Nook is resonating with the reading public and the device won’t even ship until the end of November.

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Ebooks are only a part of the digital revolution we are seeing in the world. Everything is becoming digitized; from literature to music and video. Computers are the new entertainment centers. Access to vast amounts of information is now at our fingertips and it’s only going to increase over time.

There’s one new literary magazine start-up that is helping take literature into the future. The quarterly publication is called Electric Literature Magazine. They are using more than just ebooks to help sell literature to a wider and more diverse audience.

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This is an update to an earlier post I wrote Race to the bottom: Amazon, Wal-Mart see who can sell the cheapest books. Now Target has entered the game and a lot of people aren’t happy about new release hardcovers being priced so cheap at these retailers. The first sign of protest comes from the American Booksellers Association (ABA), who wrote a complaint to the antitrust division of the U.S. Department of Justice.

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The Barnes and Noble Nook digital reader has officially been released. I know this news has been bubbling all over the interwebs for the last day or so, and I’m a little late. But I still wanted to jump in with my two cents (for whatever that’s worth). Overall, I think the Nook is great for the ebook industry. It is one more choice for consumers and gives much needed competition for all the other e-reading devices on the market.

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In an earlier post I wrote (Should ebook readers be multifunctional?), I argued that for the most part, when I sit down to read, I want to read with few distractions. I don’t a bulk of my reading on my Sony Pocket Edition Reader and have found myself doing less reading on my iPhone. Call me a purist, but sometimes I just want to read.

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