My understanding is that ePaper technologies currently cost a fortune. I imagine that the majority of the cost is in the display.

Amazon does have a good market, as they are the hardware vendor and the content vendor. It's exactly equivalent to Apple, the iPod, and iTMS.

And the books are good deals, ignoring the initial cost of the hardware. I was just looking at getting Neal Stephenson's Anathem. It's $29.95 retail, $19.77 at Amazon, and $9.99 for the Kindle version. Not to mention that it's nice to save trees, and, hopefully, publishers will catch on that they never have to let a book go out of print.

The ability to purchase books directly from the device is very nice, as are the free samples: seemingly every available book has a free chapter. Personally, I don't do much flipping around in novels, so that doesn't bother me. And there's a search function, which would be helpful with tech stuff, if I ever bought tech stuff in book form anymore. Plus, the ability to carry a library around with you is nice. No need to pack five books for your vacation, not knowing what mood you'll be in.

It also obviates the need for large-print books, which is good for a lot of people.

My only complaints with it are: page turning takes a little too long, but if you anticipate properly, it's not a big deal; newspaper subscriptions cost too much, but considering that basically all of a newspaper's profit comes from the cover price (advertising pretty much only pays for printing), it's understandable; and paying for RSS feeds is a little ridiculous, especially since web browsing is free.

When was the last time you were reading and said to yourself, "You know, I'm enjoying this story, but I wish the book was bigger"?