The sensation of cracking a new book open is one of the many pleasures enjoyed by readers who still buy paper books. “Paper book” buyers are becoming a rarer breed. The book industry, like the movie and music industries, has changed tremendously with the advent of new technologies like the Kindle, iPad, and iPod and iPhone applications that make electronic, digitized versions of almost any book available at your fingertips.
The e-book is lighter and cheaper, and because it is paperless, it is also extremely environmentally friendly.
For students in particular, more and more textbooks are being made available in this electronic format, sometimes saving us about 70 per cent off the price of the textbook. One downside is that you can’t re-sell e-books, but, being cheaper and taking up no shelf space, you may not be so desperate to get rid of them.
They are perfect for papers and research. A simple “Control-F’ on your computer’s keyboard helps you find any word or entry, instead of skimming through hundreds of pages — and risking getting a dreaded paper cut — to find the quote or reference you are looking for.
Being environmentally friendly is no longer just a movement: it has become the definition of our path as a society for all future endeavours and in all industries. With its Kindle, Amazon is pushing a greener version of the book. This means no more cutting of trees to print the book and no more delivery trucks to deliver the book. All this helps the bottom line of the company, but it also makes us happier with a cheaper price.
One thing that cannot be overlooked is e-book piracy. This is likely to rise exponentially as more people buy e-readers and look for the cheapest way to load up magazines, newspapers, novels and textbooks. The music industry’s history with piracy will be repeated as piracy will become widespread.
This will force book publishing houses to come up with better models of distribution, like cheaper prices for paper books or bundling e-books with papers. Whatever they come up with, it needs to be done soon so we can avoid a repeat of the ridiculous litigation the MP3 gave rise to. The federal government, of course, has already introduced new legislation, aiming to quell the rising fears from the various media lobby associations of Canada’s passiveness to piracy.
There will always be a newer way to do old things. For e-books, it’s not a matter of if, but when, the general population will adopt the new technology. Who still carries tapes and a Walkman? Everyone’s got hours of music on their iPods or similar devices. It may take years, even a decade or two, but buying books at a store and reading a paper book will be like buying records: they make great gifts for collectors and remind us of a time when we did not need to charge our devices every night.
