Will e-books kill the book?

It has been surmised that within 25-30 years e-books like kindle e.t.c will have almost entirely replaced the traditional paper hard copy book.Is this overly pessimistic?Would you miss books?Personally I love browsing in bookshops,stumbling over new finds,the very smell of them.Will e-books liberate the market or lead to reams of turgid tosh?Will writers be able to earn a living from their craft,or will it democratize the written word?A penny for you thoughts...

 

I love books but now the arthritis in my hands makes it painful to hold books, magazines, etc. long enough to read much of them. In that since, e-books are pretty okay with me.

 

Digital media is great. More people can write and distribute, as we're showing on this forum right now.

But it's important to have hard copies. It's bad to have tech built on so much tech that you forget what's at the bottom. People need to be able to do things like write, sew, etc, and we're at a turning point where people are not learning these things properly, if at all. It's like literacy has hit it's peak, and then the cell phone happened, and it's going back downhill.

 

I would really miss the book. I don't like the e-books.

 

I love books and bookshops. There is nothing quite like going into a store and browsing even if I have a clear idea of what I want to buy. I quite often just sit in front of my bookshelves and think about what I want to re-read. I have read stuff on screen but it's not for me.

 

No, paper books will stay around as well.

 

I understand that ebooks are the new trend. They can be very convenient, however, I love my books. There's something about the smell and the crackle of binding that can bring you into a different world. Ereaders just aren't the same to me. Not something I see myself having any time soon. I have a ton of books on my wishlist this year and intend on having a new bookshelf for them all too.

 

I don't think they will "kill" the paper copy books. But I do think that they are a great way for new writers (like myself) to get published. I have a Nook and I've downloaded some pretty good books that are only in e-book format.

No matter what, though, so many people love the feeling of holding a book...so I think paper books will always remain.

 

25 - 30 years? I would have thought that it will happen much sooner than that. More like 10 years.

Lets use 10 year olds for an example. By the time they hit their mid teens e-books will not be a new thing anymore. They will be common place enough just to be normal. They will carry that onto their uni years and so forth.

I still think that paper books will exist, but in the same way that technically VHS still exists. They will be the domain of libraries and 2nd hand stores, with maybe a few specialist books stores, but by no means mainstream.

In all honesty, I'm not sure about how I feel about it. I have embraced e-books (and downloaded audiobooks for that matter). I love them. But at the same time, I will miss the ideas of the paper book. There is something romantic about them. But I still feel that they will be superseded sooner rather than later.

 

I think e-books are killing paper books. More people are staying away from libraries and little bookshops because they have e-books. This isn't good economically, as well as socially (and for our mental well-being). Personally I enjoy going to the library and used book sales. I like to collect books and see words and illustrations on paper.

The same thing happened with music, CDs replaced vinyl (the latter being a more sincere, authentic form of producing music), now digital mp3's are replacing CDs.

there's also something not right for my eyes to *only* read from a screen...I will stick to real books.

 

It's not will they kill e-book, they are going to kill it because most of the publishing agencies are now releasing new books only on e-book . Which is absolutely ridiculous.

I was researching for a long time looking for a new specific book that I want, travel al the way to Barnes & Noble to find out they only sell it on a Kindle/Nook books. I obviously can't take my macbook with me everywhere I go when I want to read, So they are telling me i have buy a kindle for $70 and then buy the book in order to read on the kindle.

Sometime I think stuff like this is unnecessary, if you notice the more time you spend in front of a screen/computer screen it has a negative affect on your eye site. My mom now wears glasses, because she lost her vision from being in front of her computer for a long period of time because of her work.

When all I can do is buy the damn book, and read it on the train.

 

kindle suprise

smash the thing up

receive the gift of commonsense.

 

No. There will not be a full take over. I would expect e-books to hog up more and more of the market for awhile, then books will rebound some (more so than vinyl has).

Books are just better. You can protect them better, they are easier to read, more of a collectable, easier to share, easier to display, etc. etc.

 

e books just won't replace my collection.

 

Yeah.
Writng has been around for quite some time, and talking still hasn't become obsolete.

 

I don't think so. I think that there is a place for both and a market that will service both.

I love the ease of a reader for traveling but there is nothing like holding a book or the smell of a book.

I will continue to use both because it is convenient and depending on what I am doing one or the other fits better but I could not give up bound books.

 

That's a fair point. There are certain books that I own on all of their formats. Paper, Kindle and Audiobook as they are all different experiences and I love them all.

I think more than the e-book itself, Amazon concern me more than anything. They are the dominant paper book seller (for new books anyway), they make and own the Kindle platform and the own Audible.com, which is by far the dominant audiobook seller.

They could really cause issues in the future if they wanted to.

 

Books are a sacred tool to knowledge and will never be outdated. Hardcopy will survive when techno communication may fail, due to shut down or electrical shortage, whatever. IMO

sh

 

It's probably worth noting in this discussion that the mass produced bound book is a relatively recent technology in itself. Johannes Gutenberg invented his printing press around 1450, with the first books (the bible) being published in 1455.

The middle of the 15th century is incredibly recent against the backdrop of human existence. For the vast majority of our time on the planet, our communication has been limited to word of mouth story telling.

My point in bringing all this up? We are barely at the embryonic stages of the electronic tech world. We don't really have a clue where digital communications are going to take us yet. It may be wonderful, brilliant and better than the printed word could ever be. Or it may not. I have my suspicions that it will be the former, but it is just guess work!

With all that being said, I really do think that oral storytelling and communication will always be number one, regardless of whatever is around the corner.

 

They have their advantages and disadvantages. For my boss that reads half a dozen books while in camp, he discovered e-books and loves how convenient it is to him instead of carrying around heavy books everywhere. It saves him from going to the library and the bookstore. I think it can help authors by making their books easily accessible while avoiding the process of publishing.

But I love cracking open a book and turning the pages. There is something incredibly soothing about it. I don't like looking at a screen when I read a book, I like to hold it in my hands. I also like to sit comfortably, not in my computer chair to read. I do enough reading online already. Imo, books will never be completely replaced by digital media.

Books are much harder to round up and burn than simply erase or corrupt digital files.