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Google to launch e-reader Sunday: Meet the iriver Story HD

By Carolyn Kellogg
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Google debuts its first partner e-reader Sunday. The iriver Story HD has an e-ink screen and WiFi but not 3G connectivity. It is the first e-reader built to be fully integrated with Google ebooks. It will be for sale at Target stores nationwide, retailing for $139.99.

Target sells an array of e-readers, including those by Sony and Kobo, and Amazon’s Kindle.

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Friends of independent booksellers, hundreds of which have teamed with Google as their ebook sales partner, may be inclined to take a look at the new Story HD.

The name is somewhat mysterious. When applied to a television, ‘HD’ generally means ‘High Definition,’ which refers to a digitally compressed high resolution color image. Since the iriver Story HD is a black-on-gray e-ink reader, I’m not sure what HD means. Maybe our colleagues at the Technology blog can explain what the ‘HD’ stands for.

Or maybe it means ‘Hey Dude,’ ‘Happy Documents’ or ‘Hot Diggity.’ Who knows? Specs for the new device aren’t yet available on the iriver website.

Nevertheless, Google is enthusiastic, writing: ‘The Story HD is a new milestone for us, as iriver becomes the first manufacturer to launch an e-reader integrated with Google eBooks.’

-- Carolyn Kellogg

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Carolyn Kellogg

Carolyn Kellogg is a prize-winning writer who served as Books editor of the Los Angeles Times for three years. She joined the L.A. Times in 2010 as staff writer in Books and left in 2018. In 2019, she was a judge of the National Book Award in Nonfiction. Prior to coming to The Times, Kellogg was editor of LAist.com and the web editor of the public radio show Marketplace. She has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Pittsburgh and a BA in English from the University of Southern California.

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