I’m not sure I agree with you about people not reading books for more than an hour at a time. Maybe that’s true on average, but it’s not so extraordinary that one hour would be insufficient. I’d hate to be on a long flight and know that my digital book can only give me an hour’s worth of reading. In fact, it would be a deal breaker for me, because that’s the situation in which a digital book would be most convenient. I can’t realistically lug six or seven books on a plane, but there’s no extra space needed with an e-reader. So if my first book turned out to be a dud, I’m not stuck with reading a crappy book on a long trip, I just switch to a new story.

It’s similar to talk time on a phone. Hardly anyone has two-hour-long phone conversations on a day-to-day basis, but you always want the option available should you need it.

(Still don’t get TGF, though.)

Word verification: were hawk – Beware the werehawk, Amazon, for the moon be full.

I’d have to disagree and say that Apple have clearly won this round without ever being in the ring. To provoke this fight – which it seems to me they unquestionably did – and then watch Amazon take a walloping… must be very satisfying. Between the publishing industry as a whole and Amazon on the issue of control of pricing, again, this round goes to the publishers (after a long period during which they lost most of ‘em, owing to Amazon’s extraordinary reach and confidence). The overall situation, of course, remains undecided. It does look to me, though, as if Amazon’s de facto deathgrip on the ebook trade has come to an end, and that the Apple model – and Google Editions, when that comes along – will take the edge of threats like this from the world’s best-known online retailer.

I’m also intrigued by the possible knock-on of this in terms of reading habits over the next decade. To be truthful, one rarely reads a book for more than an hour or so at a stretch, so the iPad’s rather short battery life (by comparison with the Kindle, though not, of course, with a laptop) isn’t so much of an issue. If the screen is less than perfect for reading that may push people toward buying both digital and paper copies of favoured books (I have said before, and will shortly be saying rather more loudly, that we need a way to have a deal on that, so that you can buy the electronic copy and then get the paper one for a sharp discount, and/or vice versa.) Although, that said, I understand that colour screens capable of moving image display and low-glare reading are not far off.

It’s all change, folks. It’s going to be exciting! And that’s the key: don’t be scared. We have to grab this and make it amazing, because if we dillydally it’ll roll over us as it did the music industry and make things difficult.

I just hope it doesn’t turn into a total farce like it did for so long in the music industry.

This post was mentioned on Twitter by Harkaway: Amazon, Macmillan, Apple: TGF FTW! http://bit.ly/cmEMXO...