Book paper quality and Kindle ebook readers

It's recently come to my attention about the poor quality of the paper being used for books being published. I've been horrified by the toilet paper quality of the recent hard cover releases these days. This is not a good omen for the publishing industry. I'm aware of the need for "environmentally" safe material or cost cutting methods being used, but the bottom line is people in my opinion will be turned off from reading good books (if indeed they are good books being treated poorly by the publishing houses.)because the paper quality is so poor it doesn't add up to want to plonk down hard earned cash for such shoddily produced material. Just my opinion but I don't think I'm alone in thinking this way.

A more pressing concern is something I've been thinking about since the introduction of the ebook reader like the Amazon Kindle. I'm wondering if Barnes and Noble or Borders is aiming for an agreement with Jeff Bezos (Amazon founder) to subsidize the production of tailor made Kindle ebook readers for their customers? This is speculative on my part...but this would open the door for a new kind of competition...signing up big name authors to pen books exclusively for the Kindle books financed by deals with Amazon.com and/or Barnes and Noble?! I don't think this is something to sneeze at both financially and possibly even philosophically.

The recent improved version of the Kindle DX model (bigger size) opens the door for an eventual release of a full color version down the road. I'm positive this will happen eventually but could be bad news for old time publishers of books. They could definitely see a drain in their financial portfolios should this happen down the road. Why? Very simply, the Kindle and other clones would make it cheaper for the consumers to buy titles they normally wouldn't look at provided the distributors make sweetheart deals with the publishing houses to stock up subscription models exclusively for that particular make of e-book reader.

On the business side...this sounds interesting and opens the door for lucrative deals for the publishing houses starving for new sources of income in these tough economic times. But philosophically...this could be problematic in terms of fairness to the customer and for free exchange of ideas in general. If publishing houses get to hoard up authors and book exclusives with e-commerce sites like Amazon and Barnes and Noble...this may begin to sound alot like monopoly anti trust concerns could crop up. The raason I believe this could be a disturbing trend is that authors would be pressured to sign up for only a certain publishing house because only that publishing house would be able to release their books to the public...based on a deal with either Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

I believe this should start a discussion about the technology of the Kindle book and the implications for the future of book reading and the public. I think it may be time to have people discuss making an "open source" ebook reader to avoid these potential pitfalls for the publishing industry for both the reader and the publishing houses. Making an "open source" ebook reader would help stifle these attempts at information control by the publishing houses and the technology industry in particular. Nobody should be allowed to have a monopoly on the source of reading and how people read their materials. Just my opinion.