subject: Should You Make The Change To An E-book Reader? [print this page] Are you someone who reads a lot of books? If so, how would you describe your hobby? Would you say that you love reading or that you love books? Its not a semantic distinction the question is prompted by recent developments in publishing and reading technology.
The thing is, e-book readers really took off in 2009 helped greatly by the release of the Amazon Kindle 2.0 and, later in the year, the larger Kindle DX model. E-book readers had been around for quite some time before that the Franklin eBookman launched in 1999, over a decade ago but it wasnt until 2009 that these devices really took off. For whatever reason they were, during 2009, an idea whose time had come.
As previously stated, the release of the Kindle 2.0 was a significant factor but not the only factor in this. The original Kindle hit the market in November 2007, well after the eBookman and also behind the Sony PRS reader which launched in 2006. There was a fairly good response to the launch of the original Kindle - Oprah Winfrey even announced that it was her "favorite new gadget" - but it was not until the release of the Kindle 2.0 that e-book readers really seemed to catch on in a big way.
Amazon had certainly done their homework and the upgraded Kindle 2.0 was a very much improved piece of hardware in comparison with the original. As well as improvements to the hardware, the choice of books on offer for the Kindle had increased enormously. At the time of the Kindle 2.0 launch there were just over 200,000 Kindle books available. This number has continued to grow at an average rate of around 500 new titles a day. At the moment there are over 500,000 titles available for Kindle users to choose from.
Needless to say, Amazon made a very good job of marketing the Kindle. They already had an endorsement from Oprah and when Stephen King published a special novella to mark the launch of the Kindle 2.0 it certainly produced huge amounts of publicity for Amazon's new device. The launch of the large format DX model ensured that the Kindle continued to hog the limelight into the second half of the year. This was promoted as the ideal device for readers of magazines, newspapers and academic textbooks - and the academic publishing fraternity certainly generated a great deal of publicity for the Kindle as Amazon entered into partnership agreements with colleges and universities across the nation.
Of course, e-book readers are aimed, fairly and squarely, at people who read a lot of books. It wouldn't make much sense to invest in one of these if you read only a book a month - would it? Many avid readers will be just as fond of books as they are of reading. Its only natural to wonder if you will miss the feel of a real book in your hand, the pleasure of thumbing through the pages, marking your place with old bus tickets or even dog-earing the pages. There are plenty of reviews online that will tell you how the Kindle compares with Barnes and Nobles Nook reader or how the Sony Daily Edition stacks up against the new Apple iPad. But how well does the Kindle, or any other e-book reader for that matter, compare with a good old fashioned book?
A recent survey of American e-book reader owners discovered that 4 out of 5 of them actually preferred using an e-book reader to reading a traditional book. Perhaps they may be a little biased but e-book readers certainly offer some advantages in comparison with conventional books.
E-books are considerably cheaper than traditional books. This is to be expected - they don't use ink or paper and, being a downloadable digital product as opposed to a physical one, no shipping charges are incurred. For exactly the same reasons, e-books are more environmentally friendly than conventional paper books.
E-book readers are easy to operate with one hand so on a crowded bus or train they are easier to handle than a conventional book. They also have the capacity to store hundreds of books electronically so you can carry a small library with you on your travels.
For many book lovers the display itself could be a concern. Modern e-book readers use special e-ink technology. This is very different to reading on a back-lit computer screen and produces a reading experience which is astonishingly similar to reading standard text printed on paper. Page turns are also very much faster than they were even just 12 months ago. After a couple of hours using an e-book reader you wont even be aware that youre using an electronic gadget rather than thumbing through the pages of a traditional book as long as youre reading a good book at least.
E-book readers really do have a lot to offer book lovers. They have developed very rapidly and there will no doubt be more changes in both the e-books and the e-book reader hardware in the short to mid-term future. The Amazon Kindle is currently the clear market leader but is facing very stiff competition from competitors such as Sony, Barnes and Noble and the new Apple iPad. This competition will be good for consumers as it will tend to drive the prices of both e-book readers and e-books down. It does seem likely that e-books will play an important role in the future of reading and given Amazons strong association with (love for?) books, its hard to imagine that they wont continue to play a key role in the future of reading.
