Digital reading will completely take over. It's lightweight and it's fantastic for sharing. Over time it will take over.
Trees are being saved because of the Kindle.
I think I was the third person in the world to get a Kindle, and I hated it from the minute I got it.
I can imagine a future in which real books will exist but in a more limited, particular way.
An e-book is not a physical book. That point might seem trite until you stop for a moment to think how much simpler it is, in a certain sense, to destroy electronic than physical traces.
First, if you love the Kindle and it works for you, it isn't problematic, and you should ignore all my criticisms and read the way you want to read.
Electronic books are junk.
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.
I've gotten into doing electronic books and audiobooks, so I have an iPad. I still love reading a real book, but when you travel, it's better than carrying around a bunch of books.
The advent of Kindle, the iPad, and other portable reading devices has so far simply resulted in turning analog print into digital print while keeping the same linear prose format.
Back in May of 2008, the Kindle was still quite new, and we focused on that.
I use an e-reader when I'm traveling: I love carrying dozens of books on a small lightweight device, and I'm still amazed every time I purchase and immediately start reading a new title without leaving my hotel room - in another country!
I am not opposed to e-readers. Any technology that encourages the reading of literature is a good thing.
Digital books are still painfully ugly and weirdly irritating to interact with. They look like copies of paper, but they can't be designed or typeset in the same way as paper, and however splendid the cover images may look on a hi-res screen, they're still images rather than physical things.
I read one chapter of a book and put it down. Thank God for Kindle.
E-books are preferable to paper; they can be delivered instantly. In many cases, they're cheaper; you can buy them with the press of a button.
A book is not necessarily made of paper. A book is not necessarily made to be read on a Kindle. A book is a collection of text, organized in one of a variety of ways. You could say that words printed on paper and bound between cloth covers will someday be obsolete. But if and when that day comes, there will still be a thing called books.
In my own life, I've seen myself ramping up the amount of text I consume digitally. For me, it's the weight and inconvenience issue - I want anything that will spare me having to carry around reams of paper.
I have an affection for tangible objects, like books and pages, but people sure do seem to love their Kindles! We're definitely in the middle of a revolution that will determine how people find, read, and experience stories.
The common intuition is that e-books should be cheap because they aren't physical - no printing, no shipping.
I've never read an ebook. Print every time.
The technology that threatens to kill off books as we know them - the 'physical book,' a new phrase in our language - is also making the physical book capable of being more beautiful than books have been since the middle ages.
