Now we've talked a lot about e-book readers and related services over the last year. There are lots of them out there. I myself have a Kindle that I use frequently. Other people have an iPad. Here in Europe, the Oyo reader is starting to get some attention. But e-books have been slow on the uptake here in Europe.

In fact, just last week, the Wall Street Journal published an article entitled: "European Book Market Holds Back E-Readers"

It said that while around 17% of all printed books sold in the U.K. in 2009 were bought online, that proportion was only 12% in Germany. That figure drops to 7 percent in France and even lower in Italy and Spain. That's according to the Federation of European Publishers. By contrast, Americans buy nearly as many printed books online as they do from bookstores.

In a blog post earlier this month, a Norwegian business professor, Espen Andersen, decried the sorry state of ebooks, especially in his home country. He openly dismissed a new plan by a Norwegian publishing company to sell an e-reader that has removable digital book disks, rather than making them available as individual files.

So I rang him up on Skype to learn more.

Interview: Cyrus Farivar