AS THE PAGE TURNS: THESE DAYS, READING IS AN OLD PASTIME WITH A NEW TWIST
Posted October 26th, 2009 by adminSay you want to spend your Sunday morning with a riveting page-turner. What do you do? If you live in the 21st century, it is likely that sooner or later (if not already), you will curl up with a little electronic tablet allowing you to read e-books on a digital screen.
Welcome to the world of e-readers. Whether you like or hate them, these little devices like Amazon’s Kindle, Barnes and Noble’s Nook, and many others hitting the market in the near future, it looks like e-readers are here to stay.
In fact, a published report notes that in May, Forrester Research of Cambridge, MA, forecast the 2009 U.S. sales of 2 million digital book readers. This month, the company upped its prediction to 3 million, with another 6 million units to be sold in 2010. By the end of next year, the research body says, a total of 10 million e-readers will be in circulation.
As many state-of-the-art technologies, e-readers offer numerous advantages, mostly related to the ease and convenience of use: They are smaller and lighter than a physical book, portable, and allow their users to buy a book anywhere, at any time. Maybe that is why Amazon has already sold nearly 1 million of these devices; as a matter of fact, the company reports that Kindle users purchase three times as many books a year as traditional book readers.
On the flip side, the cost of the newest devices may be prohibitive for an average person in these recessionary times, with both Kindle and the Nook priced at $259 right now. Still, it’s a one-time purchase and the download possibilities are endless, so if you are a voracious reader who buys rather than borrows books, you will soon break even.
Of course, there’s also the question of whether die-hard traditionalists will be on the same page – figuratively speaking – and be willing to change their reading habits. Many people prefer the feel of a physical book – no matter how unwieldy it may be. For every e-reader out there, there are countless others who would rather tote around the heavy tomes of Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” than read this classic on a small electronic screen.
The future will tell how the e-reader market will develop, but for now it is an exciting new chapter in one of our favorite pastimes.
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