Will Digital Books Replace Printed Books?
It is worth noting that the Kindle version of Dan Brown’s much-hyped book The Lost Symbol sold more copies in the first few days than did the printed version. Admittedly, the Kindle version was cheaper ($9.99 compared with the hefty price of $29.95 for the hard copy). Yet we must agree that this is indicative of the fact that eBooks are daily increasing in popularity.
In case you don’t know, the Kindle is an electronic device put out by Amazon to download and read just about anything you can think of from its 350,000 volume library of books and magazines. Once downloaded, the reader owns that copy and can read it when they want, as many times as they want. It is small, just five inches by eight inches and a third of an inch thick, and the battery can support days of reading before a recharge.
Some were no doubt scared away by the initial price tag of $400, yet Amazon now says it will sell nearly 200,000 units by the end of the year. The price has now dropped 35% to $259, $279 for the international version. And since Amazon keeps track of what all you purchased, if the unit crashes you can always reload them at no cost.
Though the type size of the Kindle can be adjusted, Amazon has now come out with the Kindle 2, the larger version of the eBook reader. The screen is 9.7 inches diagonally, close to the size of a sheet of notebook paper. It too is just .3 inches thick, has an equally impressive battery life, and contains 3.3 gigs of memory (up to 3,500 books storage). The Kindle 2 sells at present for $489. Both units can be set to read the book to you though the voice is computer generated and certainly not the quality of a professionally done audiobook.
Neither Kindle is dependent on a Wi-Fi network to get access to the library, for they operate on a 3G network like a cell phone. As their ad states, a reader can literally hear about a book and be reading it in less than a minute in 16 shapes of gray on the Kindle. You can actually get magazines or newspapers before they are on the newsstand. Another nice feature is the Kindle’s access to an online dictionary. If the reader finds an unfamiliar word in a text he is reading, the scroll wheel can be used to select it and look up the meaning.
Apple has entered the competition with a free iPhone or Touch application called Stanza with which an owner has access to a number of book sources including both free books and best sellers. The Barnes & Noble eReader is similar, though, at last report, their e-Books are not priced competitively. A Kindle for iPhone (and Touch) application is also available. The Touch and iPhone are not as large as the Kindle but they have color monitors (helpful for maps and color charts), the type size can be changed, and they are much more versatile than the Kindle.
On the negative side, e-Book readers do have disadvantages. For example, you paid for the book but you cannot share it with others as you could a hard copy. Though having many books at your fingertips is great, you can’t write in the margins or give them as presents for special occasions. You cannot be too far from an electrical power for when the battery dies, you can no longer read, and you lost far more than the cost of a book if it is stolen. You never again need to buy a large print version of anything, but neither can you pass on priceless volumes to future generations. (Imagine the grandfather in Princess Bride reading from a Kindle!)
Though the printing of hard copy books may decline, this author’s prediction is that it will be a long time before purists are willing to give them up. The smell and feel of a book is simply not replaceable by an electronic machine.
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Tips for Kindle – Text to Speech, Music and Audiobooks
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