ebooks the wave of the future

There'll be $19.99 ebooks within 3 years (if there aren't already).

Ebooks are also readable on mobile phones, which an awful lot of people with very little money find worth investing in.

There will always be a disparity when it comes to what's available to kids. I coach soccer and can't reach a quarter of my players via email, while the rest are texting before practice on their iPhones.

And as easy as it would seem for libraries to close the void, the trend has been to cut state funding and small libraries affording ereaders for loan is a rarity (my wife was a library director for years).

And even when the devices come down drastically, many parents still won't part with their cigarette money to buy it for their kids.

Man, do I sound like a buzzkill or what? Sorry. Just my experience...

Stlight said:

If ebooks are the wave of the future, what happens to people who don't have an extra $150 for a reader? It's one thing to scrape together $7.99 for a book. I remember saving for books as a kid, okay and now. But $150 is out of the range of most lower income kids.

Will this advance - ebooks - actually decrease literacy ?

Wouldn't it be wonderful if children could get e-readers for free? Then they could to to the library and download free books. I'm thinking of kids that don't have computers or if they do, don't have Internet. There are still people who don't have these things and they deserve books. But we know that Amazon, Sony, and the others aren't going to be giving away their e-readers. Why that would be like authors agreeing to sell their ebooks for less than the price of the hardback when it comes out, or the paperback when it comes out. Anyone know a literacy group up for this? One with major funding?

Sorry for the somewhat rant, but we have to think not just from A to B, but to C and D as well. I see this as similar to when the AI technologies made it where the cotton mills no longer needed very many employees. The AI people I knew went around saying how wonderful we've taken people out of dangerous jobs. Of course they were annoyed when I asked what had they done to find other jobs for the workers. It was not their problem, it was someone else's job. I don't think so. It's the same as ignoring the possiblity of increasing illiteracy by putting books above the pockets of even more people than now.

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I doubt e-books are ever replacing libraries.

even if they did, with the drop in technology prices (e-readers were $300 a few years back, they'll be half what they are now in two years) and the cost of books going up, I think your math is flawed. A current e-reader (and I do not own one) costs about the same as four to six hardcover books; is four to six hardcovers (or two months of phone bill on your cell) an unattainable bar? I doubt it. perhaps for the "poor and downtrodden" you're citing, but so is buying any books, other than in thrift shops--they will be using secondhand and libraries, if they have the will to use either in the first place. Think public libraries are burning their stacks to buy e-readers? Think school libraries are closing their doors?

In light of the price drop factor on readers, the price increase in books, the fact almost nobody thinks e-books are eliminating print or libraries, and the fact readership has been declining since well before e-readers because of television and a host of other factors, it seems you may not be thinking all the way to D as you claim that nobody else is....you set up a problem based on an unlikely full extinction of print versus a statis pricing in a field where price is constantly dropping

As happens with all tech, the early adopters pave the way for the second wave adopters, who pay less. The second wave adopters pave the way for the third wave adopters, who pay less than the second wave. Once the masses adopt, the prices plummet and cheaper versions of the tech begin to pop up. As for the reader makers who also sell e-books (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.), the profit paradigm will gradually shift from selling a few expensive readers to selling lots of low to moderately priced e-books.

Whoa. I wrote "paradigm." I think I'm listening to too many economists on the radio. Help!

Perhaps a lot of people will get pirated copies in some form.

E books will never be a replacement for hard/soft cover books, they are just another facet of reading. I love my home library, as well as the public library, and I won't give up either until I...well, you, know.

I'd hate to think of the circumstances in which I wouldn't be able to scrape together $150.

ebooks are the wave of now. I'm on it. ereading every day. buying ebooks all the time.

Barnes & Noble also offers its nook Reader software for myriad phones and computers for free.

Paper books are not going to become obsolete anyway. Nor will public libraries which I hope will stop with this 'user pays' nonsense and keep on providing people with books regardless of their income.

Ebooks don't require an ereader for someone to read them, so the argument that many people can't afford an ereading device is moot. Anyone with a computer or smart phone can download free software to read ebooks, even when in proprietary DRM format, like Kindle.

The question of computer access period is another topic altogether, with broader implications than access to books or fostering illiteracy, IMO.

And...

Stlight said:

Why that would be like authors agreeing to sell their ebooks for less than the price of the hardback when it comes out, or the paperback when it comes out.

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Um, unless self-published, an author has exactly NO say in the pricing of a book, electronic or otherwise, discounted or not.

I love how Americans think $150 is a lot for an ereader.

E-books are a coming thing - we are at the beginning of a major shift toward what is read and how. You don't have to have a Kindle or Nook to read e-books - you can download (someone else mentioned this too) free software onto any computer to read them. Like all new technology, they will get cheaper too.

E-readers come in the same price range as a good I-pod and trust me, I see kids whose families have trouble making ends meet be-bopping along to the beat of their Ipod all the time. Until this year, I also worked a great deal at the local high school where almost every student, rich and poor, have a cell phone of some kind (most that made mine look like an absolute dinosaur even though it's just barely a year old) and an Ipod.

If reading isi a priority, they will find a way. In my location, most young people work a job outside of school hours so that they can have these wonderful mod cons.

The debut of paperbacks was long before my time but I have read about the effect of the cheap, readily available reading option for the public. For poor kids, that made a vast difference to them because books, good books, were suddenly available for a fraction of the price of a hardcover. Soon, e-books will be the same way.

It's the dawn of a new, exciting area in book publishing.

Bit hard to read an e-book in the bath surely?

I don't get that argument. Who'd want to read a print book in the bath? If you drop it, it gets wet, and how are you supposed to wash yourself while turning the pages of a book?

When I have a bath, it's with the aim of getting clean, not reading. If I want to read I'll pull my pyjamas on and curl up in an armchair.

If this is the biggest problem with ebooks, the revolution is already here.

Okay...

It doesn't cost a cent to read an ebook once its been downloaded. You load an ap onto your device or phone, download an ebook, and read it at your convenience anywhere, anytime. The only cost is to your battery life except for the time needed to download the ap and the ebook.

ebooks are part of the wave of the future, but they're only part of the future. Print books will always have a place in human culture and civilization. Print is part of who and what we are. But ebooks make reading more convenient. When I can download and carry around "Jane's All The World's Warships Of WW2" in a small and convenient package that weighs less than a pound rather than a 10-lb tome guess which one I'll choose?

When I can carry around 20 reference tomes including everything from"Grey's Anatomy" to "The Physiology of Insects" or "Molecular Biology" or "Strong's Concordance" guess what I'll choose?

The wonderful thing about ebooks is that you can carry hundreds or thousands of books around with you on your belt in your iPhone, your ereader, your smart phone, or even on your iPad or net book.

They're not a replacement for print books, they're a part of making information and books in general more readily available to the public at large. ebooks will not make our society less literate, they'll enhance the public's overall literacy by making reading more convenient and accessible. It won't be unusual anymore to see a man reading something on his phone, it'll be commonplace. It's already becoming more accepted for men to use their laptops in places they'd never even have thought of using them before.

ebooks and ereaders will continue to decrease in price as demand soars.

There's a sea-change coming in literacy and culture and we're on the wavefront.

Welcome it and embrace it.

I was stopped on the street by a guy the other day who saw me carrying my ebook reader (and no, he wasn't chatting me up). He wanted to know where I'd bought it as 'the Mrs' wanted an ereader for Christmas. He was amazed when I said it had 423 books on it and the memory wasn't even nearly full. And that's without thinking about the SD card slot, if 5-600 books aren't enough for you!

scarletpeaches said:

Who'd want to read a print book in the bath?

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Me. It's my 'screw the world, I'm reading dammit!' time. No one disturbs Mother's Bath Time.

But e-reader no problem. I never drop paper books in the bath, don't see why that would change with an e-reader.

As for the OP...seems OTT to me. I've got very little money, but I'm saving for one of those suckers. It's about the cost of 10 new paperbacks. And then I'll save money cos e-books are often cheaper. Reader prices are coming way down too. In the meantime, I read e-books on my laptop or PC.

It's all a matter of priorities. If you're poor, then you have to decide where the money goes. E-books and readers are no different than deciding on any other purchase. If you love to read them, you'll find a way. In the meantime, there are still print books, and I don't see that changing any time soon.

scarletpeaches said:

I love how Americans think $150 is a lot for an ereader.

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Just curious- is it more expensive in the UK?

SP, I'm sorry... (that he wasn't chatting you up).

On the other hand, I'm happy he was interested... in your ereader.

<runs for cover>

Pretty much the cheapest I've seen (not in a sale) is £109. Which is $170.

That's the kindle, which they're really pushing at the mo (hence the £20 odd drop in price lately), but it's not the 'download anywhere' version, which is £149 ($232)

Sonys start at around £130 for the most basic ($200).

SusanL said:

Just curious- is it more expensive in the UK?

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Uh...yeah. About twice as much.

scarletpeaches said:

I love how Americans think $150 is a lot for an ereader.

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Well, this Canadian doesn't think it's a lot. But neither do I have to pay what you do...I just don't think it's unreasonable.