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Are Paper Books Dead?
Author : Kathy Dobson
The Internet has lately become a breeding ground for speculation and forecasts about the death of printed, paper books as several major book publishers, including Amazon, started offering electronic readers that can replace physical books, magazines and newspapers in our life.
Several years ago, Bill Gates announced the change would come in the next 5 years, from his perspective in 2007...
"Reading is going to go completely online. We believe that as we get the smaller form factor, the screen has gotten good enough. Why is reading online better? It's up to date, you can navigate, you can follow links..."
The technophobes among us are very busy working to hurry the death of normal books and will embrace every electronic reader any company can produce as the 2nd coming of literacy. But their strongest hurdle is deeply embedded in our memories of snuggling up by a warm fire and reading a book that took us away to faraway places as we turned the pages.
That reading experience will not be duplicated on electronic devices, regardless of their ease of use. Neither will memories of dashing out in our pajamas to gather up the daily newspaper sitting on the front walk so our father could drink his morning coffee and read the headlines. In many of our memories we can still see sharing the Sunday comics with our siblings or quibbling over the magazine section while munching on mom's batch of warm cinnamon rolls.
Paper books and newspapers are part of our heritage, but some realities of today's environment will force dramatic change that will never be undone. It is well-known that all the chemical paper processing and the inks used to print them, along with several other processes necessary for paper book production, are making a negative impact on the environment. That has become the effective mantra for those pushing for electronic readers.
Our young adults live in an almost totally electronic environment...full of iPhones and handheld gadgets that will do almost anything the user can dream about.
Digital cameras, pocket-sized digital camcorders, tiny tape recorders, downloading music and movies have become standard items for anyone old enough to read. While most of us were working and building families, our children were fueling this new age of electronic gadgets with rabid delight.
That interest in a constant electronic connection is actually creating a new marketing environment that will make vast changes across the commercial publishing industry in all aspects, including music, information gathering, videos and book publishing.
There will be no stopping a movement fueled by the need for more information and faster downloads by our youth.
Along with rising costs for all the other commodities that define our lives, costs for book publishing have risen too. The major competition of the Internet with its ease of product creation and delivery to customers, will, more than likely, eventually bring down the traditional publishing companies if they do not jump on the electronic bandwagon before it is too late.
Because of their immense access to the Internet and the pioneers pushing the envelope with their innovative products, hand-held readers will make a dent in the publishing industry.
Improvements will flourish until the electronic tablets and readers become standard must-have products the same way cell phones did to normal telephones that have been a staple in homes for decades.
Right now, encyclopedias are almost a distant memory because a simple click of a mouse can bring fresh content in seconds to the browser. Distance and nationality matter not. If the information is available, anyone can find it with intelligent searching. When was the last time one of your children used an encyclopedia to research a term paper?
The data we found with encyclopedias was at least a year or two old. Now, due to the Internet and fast browsers, we can get information that can be minutes old, instead of years, and watch videos from sites across the world as they happen. This isn't the world we grew up in.
There's a paper book that's over 50 years old, "Fahrenheit 451," that told the story of a government sponsored campaign to burn all the books found in homes. The people began escaping into the woods and reciting the contents of books from memory to those who didn't want the literature to disappear. It was a powerful statement from the author, Ray Bradbury, about how television was going to destroy interest in reading literature.
Will electronic readers kill the book industry? Possibly..but we all know that could never happen. Most likely it will continue to evolve into something that meets their customer's needs. That's the way marketing and commerce works...and you can't stop evolution.
Author's Resource Box
Kathy Dobson is a free spirited business owner and entrepreneur dedicated to helping others achieve financial and personal freedom through Internet marketing with an emphasis on membership sites.
Learn more about membership sites please visit:
http://www.crazycashmembershipsites.com
For further tips and resources visit:
http://www.kathydobson.com
Article Source:
Articlebliss
Tags: electronic readers, iphone, Amazon, paper books
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Submitted : 2010-03-21 Word Count : 1 Popularity: 77 Times Viewed: 6
