Was interested to know...
...what your opinion on / view of eBooks and eReaders are. Do you see it as the death of physical books, the natural evolution of technology, a different medium to enjoy and experience literature...?
It is a combination of different things. Physical book sales industry wide started falling long before eBooks became popular, so I don't necessarily buy into the "eBooks will destroy bookstores" mentality in its current incarnation. There is no arguing that as eBook sales rise physical book sales fall; but eBooks did not start this trend. They happened to be there to pick up the slack, and with a few waves of the magic-wand-of-marketing and huge bookstore chains jumping into the pot, here we are today.
Honestly, I really feel this is the logical next step for the industry. For centuries only monks and scribes had literacy, then followed Gutenberg and his printing press. For nearly five hundred years the book remained unchanged. Every other form of media evolved and grew with technology, but not books. I think that is why this evolution is taking so many people by surprise and so many people are resisting it; we have been used to the same thing for so long and now, all of a sudden it is changing.
But we cannot compare books and literature and book-lovers to really any other media industry. There is a different relationship that develops between reader and book than between, let's say, listener and music. It has a different type of emotional connection to us; the characters become a part of us, their journey becomes ours, we see the image in our heads and develop our own tempo to the story...we experience literature in a way that allows us to create an emotional response that we would have otherwise not had.
My question to you is this: does it really matter if you are turning a physical page or a digital page? Isn't it all the same literature? Don't we have the same reactions, feel the same emotions, regardless of how we are reading it? Maybe we do, maybe we don't...I think it is too early to tell. What I can tell you is that eBooks are here to stay regardless.
It is a combination of different things. Physical book sales industry wide started falling long before eBooks became popular, so I don't necessarily buy into the "eBooks will destroy bookstores" mentality in its current incarnation. There is no arguing that as eBook sales rise physical book sales fall; but eBooks did not start this trend. They happened to be there to pick up the slack, and with a few waves of the magic-wand-of-marketing and huge bookstore chains jumping into the pot, here we are today.
Honestly, I really feel this is the logical next step for the industry. For centuries only monks and scribes had literacy, then followed Gutenberg and his printing press. For nearly five hundred years the book remained unchanged. Every other form of media evolved and grew with technology, but not books. I think that is why this evolution is taking so many people by surprise and so many people are resisting it; we have been used to the same thing for so long and now, all of a sudden it is changing.
But we cannot compare books and literature and book-lovers to really any other media industry. There is a different relationship that develops between reader and book than between, let's say, listener and music. It has a different type of emotional connection to us; the characters become a part of us, their journey becomes ours, we see the image in our heads and develop our own tempo to the story...we experience literature in a way that allows us to create an emotional response that we would have otherwise not had.
My question to you is this: does it really matter if you are turning a physical page or a digital page? Isn't it all the same literature? Don't we have the same reactions, feel the same emotions, regardless of how we are reading it? Maybe we do, maybe we don't...I think it is too early to tell. What I can tell you is that eBooks are here to stay regardless.