I’m not a fan of Blackberry devices. Actually that’s not true, I really dislike them. They’re not intuitive, and I’ve never liked the form factors. Perhaps that changes as they move towards things like the Storm, but for now I’m avoiding them.

However they are popular, and my wife loves hers. So when I saw Barnes and Noble had a e-reader application for the Blackberry, I decided to try it. While we were having lunch today, I asked her to download it and see what it looked like. She did, and we connected to my account at Barnes & Noble.

Once there, the free books from B&N showed up, along with samples that I’d sent to my iTouch and samples I’d ordered from the PC application on my laptop.

A few comments. The Blackberry application seems much less refined than the iPhone/PC versions. It wasn’t as smooth to read, and the paging down sometimes paused the device.  I wasn’t happy with the default font, but when we picked “font settings” from the menu, the screen went blank and the application seemed to go out to lunch. The screen was also small, and not really as easy to read to me.

In this case, the device got in the way.

My wife didn’t like it either, but she wasn’t thrilled with the iTouch or even the Kindle. She liked to pick up a book and just get back to her spot, but I think that’s somewhat because she doesn’t read much and the change was somewhat drastic for her. She used my Kindle a lot last year, but was annoyed when I read a book in between her sessions and she had to find her book again. I agree with that, and it seems these are personal devices.

The Blackberry application, like the others, doesn’t sync up your location among devices. In once sense that’s good since if my wife and I “shared” a book, we wouldn’t want things going back and forth. However if it were just me, and I moved around on devices for some reason, I find that slightly annoying.

I rate this as a poor implementation, but to be fair, the small screen was a bigger deal to me. She has a curve, so I’d like to see this on a Storm.

What’s the cost of e-books? It’s an interesting question that I have always wondered. I found this account of the cost of books, and it makes sense to me. I think this is about what I expect.

It is somewhat confirmed by this section on CoolerBooks: What aren’t ebooks cheaper? However Coolerbooks, which is selling another eReader (in color) called the Cool-er Reader, isn’t giving a huge discount. Wicked Prey, the new John Sandford novel, sells for $22.36 from Cooler books (in ebook form). If you had their e-reader, you’d get 25% off, or it would cost $16.77. That’s the cost from Amazon for the hardcover.

The Kindle edition is $9.99.

I know Amazon takes a loss on some books, but if they can offer the hardcover for $16, can’t Coolerbooks to better? After all, it’s without the paper cost, which isn’t much, call it $3, but that adds up. It seems to me that perhaps Coolerbooks, who says they’ll never sell at a loss, isn’t necessarily disclosing what level of profit they want.

By my reckoning, the publisher's cost of the book is about $10. So Amazon is at cost, but I'd think that other retailers could sell books in the $12-15 range and make a profit. If not, then perhaps they're not doing  a good job.

I was annoyed recently with Amazon offering a book I wanted to buy, brand new from an author, for $14. I wrote them and they responded saying the publisher sets the price. I wrote the author, and got a response back saying Amazon was playing games. Of course the publisher sets the price. At $29.99!!

This was a best selling author, fairly successful, and I heard that he has no input into the price of the book. Based on some reading I've been doing of author blogs, this seems right, but it also seems that no one wants to really talk about it. I think they are concerned about their relationships with publishers, and perhaps they are happy with the arrangement.

I don't know if I'll ever get anything published, but I am tempted to just find a good editor and go it alone. I might not make any money, but I would like to have the control to charge what I think are fair prices.

Last year I was in a bookstore and looking through some books with Andy Warren of End to End Training. I didn’t have the Kindle with me, and was waiting while Andy found a few books for his flight home. But I was still browsing since I hadn’t been in a bookstore in a long time and was enjoying the experience.

As I picked up a few books to glance through, I found a few that I wanted to buy later for the Kindle. It’s not that I don’t want to buy books, but the Kindle is very, very convenient for me. I had my phone, so I started to type in the title and author, but Andy suggested that I take a picture. So I did, actually a few pictures, and I ended up buying 3 of the books from Amazon later.

As we stood there, we talked about how if I had an iPhone, I would have just bought the books there with a very convenient and easy to use browser. I also mentioned that I saw an app for iPhones that would take a picture of the bar code and then search out pricing for you.

That’s cool, and I can see that it definitely makes things nice for bargain shoppers or those without much disposable income, but what if that practice and application became widespread? It’s an example of an idea that doesn’t scale.

If too many people were to “browse” for products, whether it’s books, toys, or auto parts, pretty soon the brick and mortar stores won’t be able to support themselves. If you go to a store, check out an item, and then decide you can save $10 or $20 by purchasing online, you are doing a dis-service to the store, and eventually you won’t be able to patronize or even check things out in the store.

I know I’m sounding more like a business person, but it’s also a common sense thing. The specialty stores, the local stores are dying out in many ways. They’ll never completely disappear, but even now there are many, many fewer of them. And it’s not just Wal-Mart, it’s also the pressures of purchases across the Internet. After all, how many of you can go to a store and check out music now? There’s some in Wal-Mart, and some in larger Barnes and Nobles or Borders, but I can see that disappearing. Browsing around, looking for music was something I used to really enjoy, just as I still do with books.

eCommerce can make things more efficient, but it can also get rid of some of the richness that we enjoy in this world. Browsing physical objects is still important in the world and I hope that businesses look to evolve to support both models.