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Like newspapers and music, books are becoming increasingly digitized. With websites like ebook.com that allow you to download books directly on to you computer, and devices like Amazon’s Kindle that let you to read and download books anywhere, the digital book revolution has begun.
The growing shift to digital makes people in the publishing and book selling industries wonder what’s in store for the future. Will books go the way of the newspaper or music? No one knows for sure, but most people at least agree that change is coming. As author Steven Johnson writes in The Wall Street Journal:
I knew then that the book's migration to the digital realm would not be a simple matter of trading ink for pixels, but would likely change the way we read, write and sell books in profound ways. It will make it easier for us to buy books, but at the same time make it easier to stop reading them. It will expand the universe of books at our fingertips … but it may well end up undermining some of the core attributes that we have associated with book reading for more than 500 years.
Certainly, there are both pitfalls and positives with this potential change. On the upside, novels and textbooks could become more accessible and easier to carry. On the downside, a minor paradigm shift could be a catalyst for piracy and copyright issues, potentially upending the stability of the entire industry. Google has already found itself in hot water for scanning books and putting them online. What’s next?
Are you an author or publisher or book lover? Do you make a living working in the book industry? How do you like to read? In print? Online? On a Kindle? What do you hope for the future of books?
GUESTS:
- Marty Ringle: Chief Technology Officer at Reed College
- Siva Vaidhyanathan: Associate Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia and fellow at The Institute for the Future of the Book
- Michael Powell: Founder of Powell's Books
- Neal Maillet: Publisher of Portland-based Timber Press
Tagged as: fiction · future · literature
Photo credit: Stillframe/ Flickr / Creative Commons
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This is an interesting point that hadn't occurred to me. I love my library and seeing the people who work there a couple of times a week when I go to pick up items.
What will happen when our pool of human interactions becomes stagnant? The internet still isn't an efficient way to meet new people to interact in person, only to "chat" our time away.
On the other hand, if libraries could deliver electronic content in a similar scheme to that they use for hardcopy books, dvd's, etc, it might draw more people into the system by virtue of it's convenience and efficiency.
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I am a life-long technophile and have wanted an e-Ink device since I first read about them years ago. However, I can't bring myself to pay the high price for a Kindle until the following two issues are resolved:
1. I cannot lend or sell my copy of the book. If I read something I really enjoy, I cannot then send the file to my wife or children, even if they also had the same type of device.
2. The price of the eBooks is still entirely too high. The Kindle edition of World War Z is $9.99 on Amazon as I write this, but they're selling the paperback for $10.17 and the hardcover for $14.92. Does it really only cost $5 more to print, ship, stock and store a hardcover book? With $0 manufacturing costs and nearly $0 shipping costs, there is no good reason why the electronic book is so expensive.
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I think we each have a punch list of issues like yours. Your first issue is a business one, not a technical one, as I suspect you know. The first step might be that you'll be able to sell or lend it to another Amazon customer. That feature won't be a priority, since it doesn't subsidize the infrastructure changes going on right now, but it should come eventually.
Price is an interesting long-term one. How much should an author get for their intellectual property? How much should Amazon get for fronting the cost of all the work they did to get the Kindle infrastructure as far along as it's gotten already?
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I think it makes perfect sense for certain types of reading, especially if it could be interactive. For instance, if I were a student, I would want my textbooks to be digital, searchable, AND I'd like to be able to highlight, bookmark, and/or add my own notes to the textbook itself. Same thing if I were doing any kind of research.
But hey, if you're doing research, wouldn't it be nice to be able to pull, combine, and notate just the books, articles, chapters or sections you need into one place and make your own virtual book on the subject at hand?
OTOH, when I am reading for pleasure, the feel of a book in my hand, browsing the shelves, flipping through random books and reading a page here or there, just to see if I like the author's style is an important part of the whole experience. I sometimes go to the library, pick the section I'm interested in at the moment, and just browse until I find something that looks interesting. How do you do that with electronic books?
Also, I'm a library reader and a used book buyer. The cost I see on Amazon for a random book I might buy is $16 hard cover, $4 paperback, $3 used paperback, and $6 kindle, why would I buy the Kindle version? If I thought most of the money was going to the author, I might be willing, but I don't. And if I lose my Kindle, what happens to my book collection?
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What you say about your book collection is so true! I love collecting books and to only own a file seems so boring, not to mention so tempory. Computer equipment is not known for its durability especially compared to books.
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Even though I am only 26 years old and my generation issupposed to be one of the big supporters of technology improvements, I have a hard time believing that plastic and electrical components will take over the wonderful variety of beautifuly bound and illustrated books that out there in the world. I dont think anything will really replace the joy and feel of turning a page, flipping through a book and looking at the page type and illustrations through out. I had to read plenty of documents while in college on the computer and it just doesn't compare to the ease of looking through paper bound material. I still prefer to look through ecnyclopedias rather than wikipedia. I think books will live on!
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One thing that often gets missed in these either-or discussions is the aging of the reading public - and our eyes. Even with bifocals, I've been unable to read for pleasure for five or six years, and experienced that as a huge loss. Yes, there are large-print books, but most of what I enjoy reading is not available in that format; yes, there are audiobooks, but the same holds true - and the experience of listening is qualitatively different from reading.
After researching all the options and trying out other people's e-readers, I bought the Kindle 2 this spring, and it's been like getting my life back. I carry it with me everywhere, and love everything about it. I'm back to reading an average of a book a week again, and that is an absolute joy.
If you follow the Kindle user forums on Amazon, you'll find that the average age of buyers is considerably older than for most new-tech gadgets. Younger readers may say "meh, why get a new ap when I can read on my PC/cell phone/PDA," but book-hungry older readers want something that "feels" like reading a book, and the Kindle absolutely does.
I think print publishers would be wise to release their titles in e-book formats as a matter of routine; production is so much cheaper than print that it almost amounts to free money. Given what the economy is doing to the publishing business, what's not to love?
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I've got several issues with electronic books. If you buy an e-book to read on you Kindle, can you transfer the book to a friend's Kindle? I share paper books with friends and family and this is extremely important.
Today 50 percent of commercial television and radio is riddled with annoying and repetitious advertising. Will e-books suffer from advertising? Memo to advertisers: I attempt to avoid buying advertised products.
Remember Ray Bradbury's Farhenheit 451 in which the fire department was responsible for burning all books? Books are contraban and promote rebellious thinking. Individual thought and action is dangerous to authoritarian states. Everybody got their information through authoritarian-run television and people numbed themselves with sedatives due to their empty lives. This is the image Kindle evokes in me.
What guarantees do consumers have that e-books are authentic and authoritative?
Is it possible to download books from the Kindle to more permanent storage or do you have to by e-books over and over?
I really hate how media transitions from vinyl to 8-track tape to compact cassette to vhs to cd to dvd to.... So, in the future we can expect the underlying technology for e-books to change. Will I have to rebuy e-books that are distributed on the next greatest format?
I'm not impressed with the rush into e-books. There are too many known unknowns. I don't like reading on my laptop even though computer graphics have improved tremendously over the years.
I'm going to sit on the sidelines concerning e-books and get myself to the library and Powell's more often.
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Coincidentally I recieved my first request for one of my novels for Kindle yesterday. Having got the digital files from the publisher already I set out to upload it to Amazon.
The process was surprisingly easy although it helps to know some html basics.
I'm delighted, many of the types of people who buy my type of fiction are more likely to be commuters or travellers with high-tech gadgets like a Kindle, and once it's there I have no overhead.
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The nice thing about printed newspapers and books is that anyone who can read can get knowledge. If you must have an electronic device and electricity, then knowledge might be available to only the few who can afford it.
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Several years ago I was given the best present, a PDA. I stumbled onto ebooks.com not long after that where several classics were available without charge. They offered a basic free program which I used at first, upgrading quickly to the premium and later thesaurus and dictionary. Now I can read when I want, make notes, bookmark, and best of all I can look up any word as I read! Wow! I was even able to switch my reading program to fit a newer PDA and I can read these same books on my laptop with a separate free program. So many free books are available on line now, classics especially, that my bookshelf contains more than it did when I read “real” books. When my current PDA stops working I’ll switch to another reader. The only books I don’t read electronically are textbooks. I have not been able to replace my tried and true study method. Being able to flip paper pages as I write notes is more comfortable for me. I’m mid 50’s, female.
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It seems to me that something that is small enough to be hand-held and rely on a glowing screen would cause severe eye strain.
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You are thinking of screens from mobile phones and PDAs. Kindle and other up-to-date ereaders use something that the industry calls e-paper, designed and optimzed specifically to reduce issues with eye strain.
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There's something to be said for actually turning the page in a book. My father is a librarian and I inherited his love for books. They are one of the few things I own that I can't part with. The thought that books may be replaced by an electronic device scares me a little. As a student, when my instructors assign a paper to be read online I, more often that not, print it out. I can't highlight or makes notes on my computer screen and having the print copy helps out a great deal. Not to mention the eye strain that comes along with reading a computer screen for an extended period of time. If I were told I had to use a Kindle or any other form of electronic "book" instead of using my text books I would not be a very happy student!
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It is, perhaps, worth noting that the Kindle and the Sony e-books do not use backlit "computer screens." They're built on e-paper technology, which works rather like an electronic Etch-a-Sketh: Particles of digital "ink" are literally rearranged on the screen with every turn of the page. No light shines in the reader's eye, and you can't read them in the dark any more than you could a printed book. Eyestrain is no more an issue than it is with paper.
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Read? Who reads? I want to be entertained. Kindle and successive products will offer a host of new opportunities. E-readers for the sight impaired. E-readers that teach kids how to read by helping them with word pronunciation. Is e-reader technology a revolutionary advance like the American automotive industry? Or might it be another technological trap we're setting for ourselves?
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E-BOOK YUCK
The main and most important issue of an electronic book versus a hardcopy: durability. I have no idea why so few seem to focus on this, they spend all this time talking about feelings, connections and all this other babble. A hardcopy or paperback book is cheap and durable, you can sit on it, you can shove it in your suitcase, you can write on it, you can spill your coffee on it, and if small enough you can put it in your pocket and sit on it. It is durable! A electronic book is not durable, it's not flexible, it's precious, it's boring, it's lame, it's for the middle class and the cliched I-Phone Mac crowd.
I'm all for technology btw and I have a mac. I even support human cloning. But I don't want some precious device laying around that I need to worry about, that could break, that could get stolen, that I need to upgrade.The book was never broken. An e-book is a complicated flimsy alternative to something that is already (incredibly) well designed.
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I'm an avid book reader, I almost always have one with me. I think I would get a lot from an e-book reader. Just as my iPod has allowed me to enjoy music in times and places where I never could before, I think a Kindle or some such device would do the same. (No more lugging around heavy books while backpacking.)
Also I don't think anyone should talk down something without trying it for themselves.
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Both my wife & I use the FREE Kindle App on our iPhones--at first we were unsure about reading on such a small format--but we both found it very easy (and now have reading material with us at all times).
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What the recyclability of these e-book readers! What happens when they're obsolete. Books are paper products, you can recycle them and use recycled paper to make them!
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Do you own a cell phone? If you do, have you owned the same cell phone all your life? Don't you think the e-readers will follow the same approach that cell phones did?
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Paper books will go the way of vinyl records: not mainstream, but still around in limited pressings for aficionados.
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Thanks for the topic today. I've been preaching the kindle for a year now. I read about 5 times more now that I have my kindle. I feel like I'm helping the environment by saving a tree. Paper and ink is toxic to the planet. One thing that is better about the kindle than a book is the access to different font sizes, and the screen itself is easy on the eyes, especially in bright sunlight.
The guests comments about poor navigation and ergonomics are true. But the pluses far out weigh these challenges.
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I am frustrated by the "all or nothing" attitude of many people re the Kindle and similar products. I am a voracious reader and book lover, that is, a lover of the physical object of books. But I love my Kindle and it has revolutionized my reading life. Traveling is easier; I can take it anywhere.
The e-ink technology allows the Kindle to run charge-free for several days to a couple of weeks. It does not cause eyestrain. Reading on a laptop is not comfortable for long stretches, nor is it as portable.
I will always buy books; I will always love my Kindle.
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As I write these words, I'm sitting in a coffee shop in Portland. I look around and I don't see Kindles or iPhones. I see books, newspapers, and magazines. The last two generations have taught us to read and interact with books. It will take a generation growing up reading on computer screens before the final nails in the coffin of printed books are put in.
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What has a greater environmental impact? Cutting down trees and everything else that goes into making a book, or manufacturing an e-book reader and powering it for years?
Siva, the histor of technology is also filled with things that are used in a different way than the inventor imagined. And, I've had my iPod for 5 years and it's still going strong.
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Why do we get hung up on Guttenberg? I love my Kindle, because it allows me to read -- note the verb, to read -- anywhere, anytime. I subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, the Sunday NYT (75 cents!) and now, the New England Journal of Medicine. And I'm largely done hauling books in my suitcase.
Is the Kindle perfect? No. Is it better than a book for some things? Yes. Do I still buy books? Of course, for authors/subjects I know I want to be part of my really permanent library.
As for expense, the newspaper subscription alone compensates for it.
(the guy who said cookbooks don't translate is wrong. the DX will solve that, and it has a USB port if you want to print a recipe.)
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Yep, I'm with you on focusing on the verb. And, I have no doubt that technology will improve to the point of capturing format as effectively as it does content.
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Is there a possiblity e-readers will become a helper technology that drives people further into themselves?
More people with their heads buried in their devices. Turn off your Kindle and drive! And we wonder why people are lonely, aggrivated and unhappy. When we're each individuated and no longer communicating with each other we will then be divisible into bitter, self-marinated chunks of ambulatory Soylent Green.
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I've been reading on my Kindle,which was a gift, for 2 months now. Although I have always loved the sensory experience I get from books, particularly used books and I'm not a technophile by any means, I do love the Kindle.
I appreciate the reduced use of paper, and I love the convenience of carrying so many books in one small device. I also love that I can email myself pdf and word documents to read on my Kindle and take notes on those documents.
Just like we still have non-digital music, we will not lose the experience of having hard copies of books. There certainly is something wonderful about having your favorite books to thumb through. Certainly for children's books, documents with a number of tables and figures, the Kindle is currently inadequate. However, as an avid reader, I have read countless books that are fine, but not favorites and just take up space rather than adding value to my life. For those books, my non-favorites, the Kindle is perfect.
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Exactly. Book lovers will always have books. If there's a book I want in my permanent library, I buy it. But for pleasure reading, Kindle editions are perfect.
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Hello, I'm currently a community college student in Milwaukie/Oregon City. They sell ebook code cards at our school book store, so I got one for my personal finance class last summer, I don't have a kindle or anything, so I had it on my computer. There's definitely more than weight lost when you get your text book in digital form, I think the way I, and many students, have adapted to skimming text books in order to get all of our reading done on time requires having a physical book. You flip through the table of contents to find the relevant parts of the book, you skim side bars, graphics, and denoted key points in order to get the general points either before or instead of reading the actual chapter, I know we ought to read the book, but sometimes you don't have time. Maybe I'd like a ebook version of a book that I'd actually read straight through, but for text books, I'd rather lug around my overly heavy backpack full of inch and a half thick text books than try to comprehend my readings with an electronic format book.
Another thing that bothers me was mentioned earlier on air, about the ability of publishers to edit content as they go. There are valuable things about old editions, what would happen if one were to cite information of an ebook and then the information got editted out? What would have happened in the Louisiana "Balanced Treatment Act" case if the editors of "Of Pandas and People" had been able to edit as they go along? On the other hand, I recall buying a copy of "The Theif Lord" by Cornelia Funke, where I turned from page 65 expecting page 66 and instead got page 30--the whole middle section of the book had been misprinted with a repeat of an earlier section. I took it back and got a refund, but it was a sad waste of paper and very disruptive to the story
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I am 21 and a poor college student. I sprung for the purchase ($249) because I want all my texts in one place. I built a camera rig that takes a picture of each page of a book then I convert these files to a single PDF and put it on the reader. (then return the book to my friend or the library) I don't use a Kindle I use the sony reader because I abhor DRM. My experience is mixed the screen is way to small and with this method of book capturing you cant use the text enlarging feature it really needs to be 8 inches. Still the fact that I have practically all the worlds knowledge in my pocket is in valuable. Also I haven't paid for a single one.
I think that if newspaperes like the Oregonian delivered a PDF format in a email to suscribers then they would see the use of readers explode and subscriptions would go back to normal.
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I don't want to read a newspaper on a computer. Newspapers should charge for their content online. I prefer to read a newspaper on paper in my hand, with coffee at my breakfast table. Pleeze.
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Our most powerful memories are sensory based. The loss of the tactile, the olfactory and the machine like experience for the viual and auditory senses will change the way our brains remember.
This will be junk in the landfill soon, and it has to be plugged in. Will Amazon offset the power use it generates? Will Amazon take all this plastic back and reuse/recycle it?
Libraries are public space; loss of this browsing commons and further isolation for people who seek quiet company, or who are lonely will have social consequences.
We’re obese, especially children…most readers aren’t lugging around pounds of books!
Affordability of the device will further divide us.
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The kindle is almost there. What I wanted and had hoped it would be,
was a reader that I could read say a french story , if I did not know a word I could look up the meaning in English AND get a pronunciation.
So the Kindle is close but no teddy bear.
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The dirtly little secret of these ereaders is that they are fragile. I cracked the screen on my $250 Sony reader by carrying it in my car (it broke even in its case). Sony wanted $100 to diagnose the problem and $250 to replace the screen -- more than I paid for it new.
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i love my iPod, but i'll never stop playing my vinyl records... so i can see myself using a kindle for convenience and travel, but i'll probably always curl up with a good book while on the hammock!
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Right now I get an accumulation of books, especially paperback, that I can't always give away after I read them. Some go into recycle.
I also like the idea of having multiple books in the device, and of being able to "look up" things or any other hyperlink that might be available.
Currently I read technical/reference books almost only onscreen on a typical PC. I enjoy the ability to highlight, search, and even add my comments. I can print this out - comments and all.
It is not clear to me how much of this annotation ability is in the readers being discussed here.
Most textbooks do have extensive page formatting, sidebars, links to further reading, graphics .... etc. No reader will make headway with textbooks until these formats, and the ability to take notes on the book, are provided.
A few of my books are not books, but rather bound art. These will reamin hardback and on my bookshelf.
I also print text and drawings and scanned pictures into PDF and make family albums, local histories, or organize information on a special topic. Any device that cannot support home-made content is missing an important part of the current trend in publishing.
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What are you reading that can't be at least donated to a library?
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many paperback books with creased spines and torn covers and dog-eared pages, and smudged print just cannot be donated to a library. And when in good condition, the library does not need 500 copies.
Look how many copies of popular books are on secondary market sites for $0.35 cents or less. The book is often being sold for the small profit the seller makes on the standard shipping charge.
So lets not ask "what am I reading" like there is some problem with my taste - lets just use common sense and stick to the point. - Mass market paperback books are somewhat akin to the overflow of tomatos in home gardens - you sometimes have to try really hard to get rid of them before they spoil.
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It's great that you had Michael Powell on the show for this topic. Powell's is such a cultural institution for Portland and the surrounding area, as well as a business. LIke Tattered Cover in Denver and Strand Bookstone in Manhattan, it offers a browsing experience that won't be replaceable by e-readers in the next decade.
But Luddites and technophiles alike should be able to see that the writing's on the wall. It's a question of when, not if. Digital technology wll offer so many useful features, that by the time we're at version 5 of the Kindle (or maybe version 10 or 15), the device will be so cheap, connecitivity will be so cheap, that physical books will be unable to compete for 90% of what we get out of books and bookstores. Books will live on--I recently bought a beautifully illustrated and printed book about gardening for a gardener--but the Powell's experience, currently subsidized for us all by a broad book-buying public, won't be subidized by us any more. It will be confined to foundation-supported or tax-supported libraries, not a vibrant marketplace.
It took Amazon to get us really started on this path because Amazon, originally only an e-bookseller, knew the implications of digital technology, Moore's Law, and the inevitability of technological innovation. They grew their business beyond books because of that. That success gave them the deep pockets needed to jump-start the e-reading world.
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I like my Kindle and can lose myself in a book. However, these are the drawbacks I've encountered so far:
-- On a plane I have to shut it off during take-off and landing. This is prime reading time!
-- I can't pass on a good book to a friend.
-- A recent choice of my book club is on the best seller list, but isn't available to download.
-- I recently spent $8 or $9 to download a travel book and found out that it was unusable. Impossible to flip through and jump around, which is how I use a reference book like this.
June
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I would like to see the Kindle before buying it. I think that reading adult novels on it would be fine for convenience (travel and commuting).
However, I'm a librarian and never read fiction more than once which I borrow from the library. But I only purchase reference books which are colorful quilting, crafts books. These would not be useful on a Kindle although it would save space on my home shelves.
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I remember, as a kid, trying to sneak-read paperbacks at night with a flashlight when i was supposed to be sleeping. Holding the book and the flashlight in a comfortable position was problematic. In fact, i've never been able to get into a comfortable position w/ a paperback novel. Perhaps eye strain isn't so much an issue as neck strain, at least in my experience.
Perhaps an ebook reader is the thing i need to get back into reading. I've got a few years to go, either way, since my grabby children will try to rip anything out of my hands, paper or electronic.
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As a librarian, I have a simultaneous love of the book as object and resource - a great appreciation for the beauty of good design, for example - but I perceive reading for the most part as a transformative act that exists within the reader, long after it gets put back on the shelf (whether my own or the library's). Maybe electronic books crack open the question of how much reading has to do with consumption. Or rather, physical evidence of consumption: If a reader owns this book and it lives in his personal den, does it mean he has read it? If someone returns a book to the library (or never gets to display it, because it's hidden in a device) - is it as meaningful to that reader? Are we talking about goods or experiences? Or is this issue so complex because books span both? Sure, the Kindle is evidence of ownership, too - but don't you want to know what's inside that Kindle when you see someone reading it on the bus?
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Anytime we are too invested in preserving the status quo, we miss the bus. (I like the analogy with vinyl.)
The future is in electrons. When in doubt, follow the money. Cost of distribution is lower, for example. Barrier to entry is lower, for example. Devices like Kindle, much like the internet, have completely changed what it means to create and consume information (and entertainment). We don't know where this is going, and it's not a good practice to evaluate the future of a new technology based on its first iterations. (My internet experience is much different today than in 1990, for example.)
Let's not forget about technologies that have greatly lowered the cost of creating and printing one-off books (think blurb.com) for those of us who cannot give up richly illustrated or photographed materials.
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14 years ago I had an Apple Newton PDA that had a feature for downloading books to it. I would download a book and read it on the bus, as I had a hour and a half commute each way. It was Ok, until I found a potential script for Aliens 3. It was sooo good that one morning on the bus I got to a particularly intense spot in the story a was scared big time. I then looked up, realized I was on the bus, and started laughing. I think this evolution has been a long time coming :-)
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As a public library & used bookstore junkie, I'm biased in favor of paper books for a number of reasons--pretty much covered in other comments above. Yes, we could save trees by printing fewer copies of those hard-cover best-sellers. And can e-books be useful? Enjoyable? Sure, it sounds like there are reasons to have them available.
However . . . here we are, jumping on yet another hard-plastic electronic gadget bandwagon, with minimal discussion of environmental impact - and with the plastics market still in crash mode. How many obsolete Kindles are going to be recycled when the next generation and/or competing products show up? It's not as though we have a good track record when it comes to dealing with this stuff; our landfills and thrift stores already have plenty of electronic media (and vinyl!), much of it still usable when it was tossed.
When the retail cost of new electronics includes future recycling costs, and when they are fully recyclable, and when every one of us actually makes sure our discards are recycled, then we can claim a breakthrough. Until then, well, it's nice to have an optional format for a book, but the long-term impacts may not be so positive. See you at Powell's!
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This discussion has been focused on an either/or debate between e-books and printed books. I see a lot of ways there can be a best of both worlds approach.
1. Buy the print copy and get the electronic copy too. I can go mobile, search, and read the print copy when I want, lend it, etc.
2. Print pictures, e-book the text. I'd love to see field guides with glorious pictures of the birds, flowers, animals, mollusks and an accompanying e-book with loads of text on said animals & birds. And search the e-book based on characteristics you see on a bird, say, and it gives you the pages to look up the picture in the print companion. Plus maps of the range in your area, not a microscopic map of all of North America with two dots of ink to indicate a species range.
This companion version would work well for photography, art, architecture, travel books, atlases. The print versions would still have the reference text in tiny print in the back, as many art books do now, but you could read it in normal text on your e-book.
Hmm- a boon for those rich, old people that were mentioned on the show so often. We'll all be old w/ feeble eyesight someday.
3. Technical books that are (closer to) up-to-date. As one comment on the show mentioned, e-books change the publishers capabilities for publishing editions. I have bought technical books several times that had only been out for a couple of months and were already out of date because of the lag in the writing, printing, and distribution of the book. The technology had already moved on. I would be willing to pay more for an e-book that would be more like a subscription to a book that would be updated.
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Comments are now closed.
Comment to the future of the book from James Lambert.
Book store and library use that I have witnessed here in Portland Oregon attest to the vitality of the paper printed media. However from personal experience I percieve the electronic media replacing the means of a much needed intra-personal relationship between the individual and its community for human services, social reciprocity and market accountability that powers social cohesion. The priest has been removed from the confessional box and replaced with a tape recorder without a tape and society is paying a premium for a 30 second maximum option time limit.