I'm sure that a lot of you Treo owners read ebooks on your device. I Love ebooks and read them all the time on each Palm device I own. Over the years, I've bought several ebooks from both eReader and Fictionwise.

Last week Fictionwise acquired the eReader.com retail electronic book business unit from Motricity, Inc..

eReader.com is one of the largest and longest-running eBook retailers on the Internet, with a large customer base and over 23,000 titles available from major publishers and authors. Electronic books from eReader.com work on a wide variety of handheld devices, giving customers the flexibility to read on whatever devices they currently own, with the ability to transfer their purchases to future devices.

Fictionwise says that this purchase will push them into the forefront of online ebook retailers by making them one of the largest ebook sellers. They plan to maintain ereader.com as an independent web site to capitalize on the strong brand and loyal customer base achieved by the site. According to the PRWeb press release, Fictionwise plans to build on the success of the eReader eBook format by expanding the product to function on an even wider range of handheld devices, allowing customers the flexibility to read on whatever devices best meet their needs.

Today I was reading over at one of my favorite tech blogs, jkOnTheRun, and was happy to read that Steve Pendergrast from Fictionwise has spoken out on the jkOnTheRun forums to let everyone know that eReader is safe. James Kendrick voiced his concerns about eReader after learning of the buyout by Fictionwise. He worried about what would happen to his eReader library of 300 ebooks after the buyout and eReader's simple yet effective DRM method used to protect the copyrighted ebook material.

Steve Pendergast, one of the founders of Fictionwise, recently posted a comment to James' concerns:

Hi,

I'm Steve Pendergrast, one of the founders of Fictionwise.

Just to set the record straight, we are absolutely *not* going to shut down the ereader format or the ereader web site.

The eReader format and ereader.com web site are both extremely important to our strategy going forward. We love the easy, flexible DRM method, and we won't change it or make it incompatible with past purchases.

Fictionwise has a long history of going out of our way to protect our customer's investment in their purchases. By owning the eReader format, nobody can ever take that format away from us. Every other DRM format we support is owned by a competitor of ours who could pull it away from us at any time. When you think about it that way, I think you see how important the eReader format is to Fictionwise after this acquisition, and how it would be inconceivable for us to throw that away.

What we do plan is to port the eReader software to a much wider range of devices, giving everyone who has ever bought an eReader ebook, or who will buy one in the future, as many choices as possible on how they read their books.

Hope this puts your more at ease!

-Steve P.

Well, that's great to know! I'm really glad that Fictionwise is going to keep the eReader format and that they're also going to make the eReader software available to more devices. I'd sure love to be able to read some ebooks on my iPhone.

For now though, I'm happy to be able to keep reading all my ebooks on my Treo. I read a few chapters last week while sitting in a waiting room at the hospital while my husband had an MRI on his knee. I just found out today that he'll be having laparoscopic surgery on that knee soon, so I guess I'll be finishing that ebook or starting on another one whenever the surgery happens.

If you enjoy reading and have never read an ebook on your Treo, you ought to give it a whirl. The Treo has a small screen but it's still fun to read ebooks on Treos. That's another reason I love my Treo; it's my mobile library among so many other things! ;-)

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Read Merciful by Casey Adolfsson