I finally broke down and go a e-reader. It's the Nook from Barnes and Noble. It was my birthday and I had a gift card. So far so good, it's easy to read on though the navigation takes a bit of getting used to. I got a story from the web and converted it to PDF and epub using Open Office. Both read OK. Then today I eighteen epub books from the site: chrome://epubreader/content/catalog.xul . Maybe tomorrow I'll register it and buy something using that gift card. And maybe try to get an ebook from my local library.

E-publishing has caused a lot of excitement in the publishing world. Probably because there isn't all that much to be excited about otherwise. Everyone seems to think that this technology will increase sales by dropping costs and upping supply. I'm not sure. I can see a conversation like this:
"You need to read this book!"
"I don't know. I'm not much into reading books."
"You can get it electronically. Easy to get and cheaper."
"So you want me to pay $150 for a reader, then buy the book and not read it. I can do that for $20 right now."

But if someone as cheap as me spends the money for one then maybe they have a future.