Will print books be obsolete within a short time? Will book stores only be used book stores in the near future? Every avid reader I speak to has tried an ebook reader of some sort, kindle, kudos, the vaunted ipad, and all say the same thing: “I like it but this electronic gidgamagag will never replace holding a real book.” So I ask again, are printed books going to go out of style soon?
Are ipads the next 'book'
As someone who loves to read and would much rather read a printed book than a digital version, I would say that yes, ebooks are the way of the future and printed books, like their vellum printed brothers before them, will die out or be reduced to minuscule levels available only to the richest of princes. My reason for saying this is that it is the avid reader that is staying true to printed works but the reality is, there aren’t that many of us. We live in a culture of trends, of fads, of “America’s Got Talent” watchers, who find excitement in the proverbial “fifteen minutes of fame” personalities who are gone as soon as the next half-baked guy crying about a rainbow hits youtube. The A.D.D generation of now only has enough processing capability to digest fifteen minutes (eleven if you exclude the commercials) so how can a book publisher expect someone like this to commit to 400 pages of text, with no twitter feed!!?
Maybe it’s for the best that book superstores like Barnes and Noble get pulped like so many unsold copies of Britney Spears’ biography. if the print industry is forced to reduce itself, there may be opportunities for the smaller, individually owned book stores to flourish because the reading “public” will be forced to buy from them. So let the ebook readers have their ipads. We readers of text will survive when the apocalypse comes and people are forced to scour the earth looking for those few printed versions of the latest Dan Brown thriller.
Read about the end of Barnes and Noble. If it’s printed in The Guardian, it must be true.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/04/barnes-and-noble-for-sale
Check out this “new” device for readers
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I don’t know the answer to your question though I suspect Ebooks are the way of the future. I can see that they must be better environmentally but I still like holding a book, making notes in a book – and what about cover art? Or do we get to make our own covers with Ipaint or whatever it’s called?
I know that some sense of panic can set in when big changes occur – especially when some one is sounding the death knell of an industry. But it may be for the best as you say. New ideas will bubble up. Creativity will not stop – indeed, it probably thrives best when new space is opened up and new ways of doing things appear. We can’t be worried about change.
MT