Ebook entrepreneur Neil Jones takes on the big guys; Guardian, 11/12/09

Katie Allen, Guardian; Ebook entrepreneur Neil Jones takes on the big guys:

"With authors who want to control their own publishing in mind, [Neil Jones] founded Interead and developed the Coolerbooks.com ebook site. He wanted to sell the Sony Reader to accompany the downloads but Sony could not guarantee supply, so he created the Cool-er ereader instead. After a few months in the market, worldwide sales of the Cool-er (which costs £189 in the UK) have soared...

He is confident that his brightly coloured devices, which have been called the iPods of the ebook world, will be number two in America by next autumn in terms of sales, and number one in the UK.

As he takes on the likes of Sony and Amazon – whose Kindle reader launched internationally in October – Jones has been looking into research on David and Goliath battles throughout history. He thinks the odds for the small guy are pretty good. Outside the battlefield, he cites the business example of Virgin Atlantic, currently celebrating its 25th year. "Twenty-five years ago, who would have given Virgin Atlantic any chance against the likes of British Airways?"...

Interead's ebook site recently became the first ebookstore outside the US to offer 500,000 of the public domain books (books that have fallen out of copyright) available from Google Books.

Jones says Interead's latest example of thinking differently is the US retail launch of its reader on the QVC shopping channel. "We know the majority of our market is women – women read more," he says."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/nov/12/small-business-ereaders-neil-jones-profile