The Frankfurt Book Fair just wrapped up, and one clear theme emerged from the show: people are willing to embrace digitized books, à la the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader, but they may need some time to get used to the idea.
For example, Penguin called such gadgets “mainstream” and no longer in “the province of geeks any longer.”
Meanwhile, plenty of people were on hand to defend the traditional book, with some going so far as to suggest electronic books will never replace the good ol’ fashioned dead trees version. You know, just like how cars will never replace horses.
The one thing keeping things like Kindle from really taking off? Right now, it’s the economy (stupid). If people are worrying about whether or not they can put food on the table, they’re less likely to spend hundreds of dollars on extravagant gadgets. And really, at the end of the day, the Kindle and its ilk are nothing if not extravagant gadgets.
Whilst the economy is hurting the growth of e-books, I dont think its effecting the growth of e-book readers that much.
Amazon and Sony need to concentrate on getting their readers into college’s and university’s before the electronic books truly become mainstream.
Actually I think the final bar to adoption is the ability to LEND a book that’s on a reader. That’s the beauty of books, if you read one an enjoy it you can share it with your friends and expand the experience of book. The more people who read it, the better it becomes. With Kindle it goes like this,
“Wow I just read this awesome book.”
“Cool, can I borrow it?”
“Uhh, you need to buy your own copy, you leech!”
If you could find a way to load scanned books or tech manuals to this device, then it would truly be a great item.
If you could find a way to load scanned books or tech manuals to this device, then it would truly be a great item.