If the hype is to be believed, this holiday season promises to be the year of the e-reader, with Amazon (AMZN), Sony (SNE) and Barnes and Noble (BKS) all hawking versions to gadget-happy consumers willing to shell out upwards of $200 a pop for the technology.
But bibliophiles whose friends and relatives are too cheap to fork over the dough for the digital device need not despair; e-books are available to anyone with a computer or smartphone, and generally for less than the cost of their cousins in print.