Lee Gomes, who writes the “Portals” column for WSJ.com, posted a fascinating piece about reading a book on his Blackberry cellphone.  The screen on this mobile device is 2 x 1.5 inches.  Inches, I say, inches.  Did I say inches?

The author had used the Sony Reader and found it very convenient and portable.  (Although Amazon reported a shortage of Kindles, Gomes has not seen any on his train or plane travels).  That led him to download books on his Blackberry which is certainly portable and convenient since it is with him at all times.

He found that the few dozen words that appeared on the screen were enough to keep him pressing the space bar for more “pages.”  Gomes scoured the Internet for downloadables and found that pricing was all over the map and so were the selections.  He also discovered that most of the fiction bestsellers were available at fictionwise.com.  Publishers should be happy that people are downloading their books onto mobile devices rather than Kindles because Kindles will make Amazon much too powerful in the e-book market.

  Gomes will continue to read on his Blackberry but he draws the line at reading on his wristwatch.