MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Nicolas Negroponte: The Physical Book is Dead in Five Years

garygibsonsf · 08-06-2010, 06:47 PM

I'm a big fan of the digital reading experience, but I'm not convinced. It's an argument that ignores the vast numbers of people who only read a couple of books a year, for whom any kind of electronic reading device isn't a worthwhile purchase, and who aren't going to read on their phone. They're going to buy cheap paperbacks - millions of them - and read those. A substantial - even huge - increase in electronic sales, sure, I can see that, since 20% of readers buy probably 80% of the books. But that still leaves a pretty vast number of those casual purchasers of bestsellers, many of whom I suspect would work hard at avoiding anything that even looks or smells like some kind of computer.

08-06-2010, 06:47 PM	#18
garygibsonsf Addict Posts: 321 Karma: 432192 Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Glasgow, Scotland Device: Amazon Kindle Paperwhite	I'm a big fan of the digital reading experience, but I'm not convinced. It's an argument that ignores the vast numbers of people who only read a couple of books a year, for whom any kind of electronic reading device isn't a worthwhile purchase, and who aren't going to read on their phone. They're going to buy cheap paperbacks - millions of them - and read those. A substantial - even huge - increase in electronic sales, sure, I can see that, since 20% of readers buy probably 80% of the books. But that still leaves a pretty vast number of those casual purchasers of bestsellers, many of whom I suspect would work hard at avoiding anything that even looks or smells like some kind of computer.