Burning the Page: The eBook revolution and the future of reading

usually a flat object that is taller than it is wide. Most of the surface area is taken up with reading, with the content. But I think this is unnecessary. It’s a waste of electricity to power such a large screen, and the objects are bulky. Besides, who wants to accidentally drop and crack an expensive iPad? I see a future when books can be projected with pico projectors onto walls, tables, and other surfaces.
    There are great benefits to be found here. By projecting an ebook onto a surface, you’re not constrained to a fixed size for the reading experience. The screen area could be as big or small as you prefer. Currently, you have to pay a premium for a larger device, whether it’s an iPad over an iPad Mini or a Kindle DX over a regular Kindle.
    Another benefit would be that your e-reader is very small and also cheaper, since most of what’s involved in e-readers, in terms of hardware, is related to the screen. In fact, the screen itself is often the most expensive component of a dedicated e-reader, sometimes accounting for as much as half of the price. Get rid of the screen, and you can make a very small, very cheap device. Something perhaps the size of your thumbnail or a USB flash drive. All it would need is a network connection and a small pico projector.
    A pico projector is an emerging technology that can beam large images from a miniscule machine. The word “pico” is used here in the sense of a picogram, a measurement the size of one trillionth of a gram. You’d perhaps unfold tiny tripod legs from the projector and aim it at a surface in front of you. Then you’d speak aloud the name of the book you want to read. If you don’t already own it, you’d be prompted to buy it, at which point it would download onto this tiny device and start projecting. You’d navigate by voice commands, and the device would be cloud-powered.
    This sort of device could socialize reading by making a book available to you and a close circle of friends. I can see this being used in reading groups, university study groups, or of course, in the privacy of your own bedroom. The biggest benefit of this type of device is its cost. Shrink the surface area of a device down to nothing, and you’ve made a cheap, hands-free reading device.
    Of course, you can take this line of thinking further and make Nooks and Kindles really, really cheap. Make them so cheap that you give them away.
    I foresee a time when Barnes & Noble, for example, will do just that. Perhaps at first they’ll give Nooks away to people who buy a hundred dollars’ worth of books a year. The retailer benefits because it saves on shipping, and it introduces new segments of its reading marketplace into the Nook experience. As programs like this are more and more successful, and as the manufacturing costs of these slimmed-down, cheaper Nooks drop, Barnes & Noble can afford to give them away to even more people for free. So now people who only spend seventy dollars a year on books—or even fifty dollars a year—can get a free Nook.
    Over time, more and more people have Nooks. More and more people are reading. And that’s good. Of course, these slimmed-down, cheaper Nooks are likely bare bones—no web browsing, no music or games, no bells, no whistles. But they’re sufficient for reading itself and serve as a gateway drug to larger, more functional Nooks that Barnes & Noble sells for a steeper price.
    If other ebook retailers use this model too, then e-readers will become very prevalent. You’ll finally start to see e-readers in everyone’s hands on subways, at bus stops, or during lunch breaks at work. If disposable e-readers become possible, you could get a new one in the mail every year, with newer features and better screens.
    It’s in Amazon’s and everyone else’s best interests to reduce the price of e-readers. This lets them increase the number of customers. Every twenty-dollar drop in price means legions of new customers for whom ebooks now become affordable. And in the final analysis, the logical price is free. Herbert Hoover once promised a chicken in every pot during the Depression, and in our own turbulent financial times, if e-readers are free, you’ll find a Nook in every house—and if not a Nook, then a Sony or a Kindle or even an Apple device.
    Just as e-readers are changing, so is the nature of how we read. I joked about privacy concerns with the Microbook. But it’s not just people on the subway who can look over your shoulder at