There appears to be a new competitor on the e-book scene.

Plastic Logic — a company that builds electronics on plastic substrate – announced a prototype of their own e-book reader this week at a technology conference in San Diego. This reader uses the same type of electronic paper display as the Kindle and Sony Reader, but it’s also somewhat flexible due its plastic-compound base — kind of like, some may find, a real book.

Plastic Logic’s reader may be more stiff (actually, flexible) competition for the Kindle, but only time (and battery life) will tell which reader prevails.