High Fidelity author Nick Hornby remains unimpressed with the Amazon Kindle and Border's iLiad electronic book-reader in Britain, and he'll tell you why after the jump. (Also, did we know that he's just quit his "Stuff I've Been Reading column in literary mag The Believer after 5 years?)

"In my [Borders] last week the iLiad was piled high on the left, just as you walk in; on the right was their wall of bestselling paperbacks, many of which are being sold at half price. It was a quiet Monday morning, and there didn't seem to be too much interest in the 400 quid ebook reader; what was striking, though, was that there didn't seem to be too much interest in the four quid books, either.

Attempting to sell people something for £400 that merely enables them to read something that they won't buy at one hundredth of the price seems to me a thankless task. (A member of staff at Borders told me that he had attempted to persuade a young and famous comedian to buy an iLiad last week. He seemed interested, until he was told the price, at which point he swore loudly and walked away. So at the moment, they are priced too high for millionaire showbusiness entertainers.)"

[London Times]

[Photo: Flickr]