There’s a special promotion going on at Book Blogger Appreciation Week in which IREX Technologies is giving away one of their new eReaders. To be in the running, we are asked to write a post about the most important feature in an eReader.

Since I was thinking about Kindles and similar book readers way back last spring, and I jotted down some notes but never transferred those thoughts to the blog, I thought this would be a good opportunity to write about the newest twist to an old technology–books.

Last spring, I wrote:

I think I want a Kindle. For the uninitiated, a Kindle is Amazon’s version of an electronic book reader. You download books from Amazon into your Kindle and read them on a page-sized screen. The Kindle is light-weight, like a book, and the print is supposed to be easy on the eyes. Right now it costs about $350. However, I figure either the price will go down, or the Kindle will acquire more features.

For that much money, I would like for my eReader to be an MPED—multi-purpose electronic device. I want it to be an eReader/Blackberry/iPhone thingy, without gaining weight. I want my MPED to:

* double as a cell phone with a port where I can plug in one of those cool headsets so that I would no longer be tempted to hold my cell phone and drive at the same time.

* get me on the internet to check my email and my favorite blogs just the way my iPhone does. No, I do not want to pay a subscription price per blog, and yes, I do want to be able to download books on the go wherever I can connect to free Wifi.

*receive TV and radio signals. I want to be able to download movies into my eReader, watch TV, and listen to the radio on it, too.

I like the size of the Kindle, lightweight and about the size of a sheet of paper, or an 8 1/2 by 11 inch book. Blackberries and iPhones are too small for reading comfortably, and laptops are too bulky to carry around just for reading. I like that the primary purpose of the Kindle is reading books. Even if it branches out, the focus will remain on books and applications for book people.

I don’t like this little episode. If I pay for a book, on my eReader or in print, I want to own it. No backsies. And I don’t want to be limited to one bookseller; I want to be able to download books into my eReader from multiple sources, just like I can buy songs for iTunes from anywhere.

Come to think of it, an eReader that is just a reader, not a phone or a Wifi internet device or a radio would be fine, as long as I can get books for it wherever I want and as long as they belong to me to do whatever I want with them after I purchase them.