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By Janice Robeson
“Except a living man there is nothing more wonderful than a book! A message to us from the dead–from human souls whom we never saw, who lived perhaps thousands of miles away; yet these, on those little sheets of paper, speak to us, teach us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers.”
~ Charles Kingsley
With the advent of E-books and E-readers, debates are raging across the internet about the future of traditional books. While it is true that people are buying more digital readers and Amazon announced in July that they sold 143 e-books for every 100 hardcover books over the previous three months—this is not the end of the story.
Here is a statistic from the Association of American Publishers:
New York, NY, August 19, 2010—
“Adult Paperback sales increased 0.9% for the month ($133.7 million) but increased by 12.1% for the year so far.”
E-books actually seem to be spurring more sales of paper books! When books are available online, more people become aware of a particular title, may read the digital version, and then go out and buy the paper book to add to their collection.
What is happening with paper books? Are e-books going to take over and make paper and ink a thing of the past?
I scanned several articles online and the recurrent theme was this… “E-books are portable, lightweight and cheap (after the initial investment for the reading device), offer capacity for downloading numerous titles to your reader, and are interactive. However, the very things that make them attractive can be a disadvantage at the same time.”
Let’s do a comparison list for starters:
Digital Books
Paper Books
The controversy continues with discussions about how the digital version is affecting people’s attention span. When reading an e-book, there are many distractions online. This costs you time and interferes with the concentration required to think about what you read.
In one study, workers switched tasks about every three minutes and took over 23 minutes on average to return to a task. If this happens to adults; what about children?
A cognitive neuroscientist stated her concern about a child’s brain…
“that it would not learn to go deeper into the text after the first “decoding” but would rather be pulled by the medium to ever more distracting information, sidebars, etc.”
Because children already have a shorter attention span, digital reading may turn out to be more of a deterrent than a help for their reading development.
E-books are great for non-fiction, current news topics, and in-depth research, but when it comes to novels, poetry and children’s books, paper rules the day. Who likes to curl up in bed with a lighted screen on an electronic gadget?
**From Naomi quoting a fellow blogger in the Jewish Publication Society Blog 7 22 09:
“Reading is a sensory experience in addition to being a way to gather information and to be entertained. A sterile file of book disks in no way can compare to browsing a used bookstore with every corner crammed with books, redolent with the slightly musty smell of old print, coffee and prowling store cats. Nor can it compare to the fresh ink smell of new books and the artistic dust jackets…”
I couldn’t agree with you more, Naomi!
Janice Robeson is the receptionist at WinePress Group and also handles copyright registration and outgoing mail/shipping. She enjoys becoming acquainted with each WinePress author and hearing their particular story.
The editorial team for WinePress of Words includes Carla Williams (Executive Editor), Laura Christianson (Editor and Coordinator), Josiah Williams (Marketing Specialist), and Thomas McGee (Designer and Developer).
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