I believe that by releasing "passing interest/low keepsake-value literature" from the burden of physicality, you are actually releasing the words from their worst liability: the price and inconvenience of actual bookness.
I don't personally like the e-readers they've come up with so far. I don't fetishize books, but I do like that they're solid and unchanging.
We have a generation of kids who may never see a bookshelf or never see books in houses. What are they going to think about books? How will books become meaningful in their lives except as yet another form of digitalized content? A book is not just digitalized content.
As the Kindle's dread grip on digital publishing is challenged by tablet computers and Android smartphones, with their bright screens and high resolution, the need for illustration is growing.
I can imagine a future in which real books will exist but in a more limited, particular way.
In our day, computer technology and the proliferation of books on CD-ROM have not affected - as far as statistics show - the production and sale of books in their old-fashioned codex form.
I'm entirely of the mindset that when it comes to books, they've got to be paper.
I read actual books. It's cool to read on a Kindle if that's what you want to do, but for me, I like having a bookshelf.
When I write, I'm still imagining a kid reading it on paper. I read e-books when I travel, but in general I still prefer holding an old-fashioned book in my hands. There's a special, tactile experience.
Honestly, I think we should be delighted people still want to read, be it on a Kindle or a Nook or whatever the latest device is.
..books look as if they contain knowledge, while e-readers look as if they contain information.
Look at the world of books nowadays. People just download books. They don't go to a bookstore. Amazon is wiping out Borders and Barnes and Noble. Those are brilliant examples of ephemeralization doing more with less at a better price.
I have the Sony Reader; I have the Kindle as well. I don't really use either of them, to be honest. I'd rather sit down with a cup of coffee and a newspaper than read all my digital books.
I will always prefer a hardback book, but I'm drawn to digital because it's so easy to acquire them when I'm having a need-to-read moment.
We are the children of a technological age. We have found streamlined ways of doing much of our routine work. Printing is no longer the only way of reproducing books. Reading them, however, has not changed.
E-readers are changing the way we read, and the author is now required to get out there and be a kind of showman, an unlikely role for introspective people used to working in their pajamas!
I'm a books person. Yes, I have a Kindle. I used it for an hour and a half and put it in the closet.
There's been a fragmentation of how the market functions, but I believe printed books are here to stay. People like the tactile experience, the smell of them; there's a great romance to them.
I hope that books don't go the way of albums and CD, large format albums, and physical product.
To compare books to computers, I mean, computers are the way to get books. That is the medium for distributing text because it doesn't require paper.
Like people would ever want to read books on an electronic screen.
You can already download any of the religious texts onto electronic mechanisms like a Kindle. But I think many people prefer to hold a book in their hands.
I am not opposed to e-readers. Any technology that encourages the reading of literature is a good thing.
Instapaper wouldn't be of as much value if it weren't for these mobile and e-reader devices. They give you a separate physical context for reading.
Hardcovers will never completely disappear. They are delightful to hold; they feel weighty and substantial. But my anecdotal evidence suggests that the world is changing.
