This holiday season one of the hottest electronics items to give as a gift was a new eReader. The Barnes & Noble Nook sold out very quickly and had long backorder lines. Many of the popular Sony eReaders sold out and the Amazon Kindle was the only eReader widely available.

For a while, analysts have been saying that before magazines and papers could go to digital formats and be popular with readers we needed color screens. The iPad may well turn out to be the most popular eReader on the market with its large color screen. Yeah the thing starts at $499, but I was seriously considering a Nook and for $200 more the iPad does so much more.

I also think that Apple may well go on to corner the digital book market with its iBook service much like it has with iTunes and the App store. Books appear to range in price from$4.99 to about $15 depending on the title.