E-Books and E-Readers, this is a hot topic these days and it’s getting hotter and hotter. For a while Kindle was King, not only because of it’s library (Amazon), but because you can also use the Kindle application on other devices. But now, it has some competition. Nook, Sony, Kobo. (We’re not going to include the iPad in this discussion since more people play “Angry Birds” with their iPads than read books.)

When Kindle first came out it was over $300.00 and still seemed like one of those things that was reserved for an elite few, but now, the price points on the Kindle, Nook and Kobo are neck and neck ranging from about $150-$200. This makes it much more within everybody’s grasp. And when you work in that most e-books are anywhere from .99 to 9.99 for a new bestseller, if you read more than a few books a year, the reader pays for itself pretty quickly.

But where does this leave traditional publishing? There’s lots of talk of it being, dun, dun, dun…”the end,” but honestly, the music industry went through the SAME thing with mp3′s and we still have music and you can still buy CDs. I think publishing will be the same way. Publishing, like music, perhaps got too big for it’s britches…so we’re seeing traditional book stores close, but we’re also seeing more indie booksellers popping up. This is a good thing and it proves that paper books will never go away. There will be an audience for them. Not everybody is going to want an e-reader. Not all books translate well to an e-reader either.

Many people have yet to embrace the e-books. They like the smell and feel of a nice hardcover or paperback. I admit, I have a lot of books…more than I realized as I packed them all up and moved them 700 miles last summer. :-/ But e-books are the future. I think if we can find a nice balance though, then there are room in our libraries for both.

What do you think? Do you have an e-reader? Which device? Do you read a mix of paper and e-books?