Veronica’s post last month about the Kindle’s ability to hold hundreds of books contrasted with most American’s lack of reading got me thinking of how Amazon’s new device could be properly used and/or marketed. Scott writes:

And among the majority of the American reading public (as measured by the NEA), anything over 11 books per year is a lot. It doesn’t really make sense to have an ebook reader that can hold hundreds of titles at once, unless you’re planning on being the one to sell hundreds of books to fill it.

A lot of people I know who own a Kindle note that one of the most pleasurable aspects of it is the ability to have newspaper content sent to them every morning. That is fine, but why can’t someone just get that via an RSS reader? I assume if you’re on the move a lot in the morning it’s useful, but wouldn’t you have a Blackberry or IPhone or Android phone for that?

Which comes to my big concern for all of these devices: All of them only do some of the things that the other might not be able to do. The average reader, if they read at all, is not invested in reading enough to spend hundreds of dollars on a device the way they would be for a high definition television. My coworkers often share books, passing hardcovers back and forth as each reads them. I’d be surprised if many of them even own books in the way that prolific readers do. They are invested in other things. I’m not sure how to market the Kindle to the common reader, but I am interested in seeing what happens next.