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Originally Posted by carld
I was referring to CWatkinsNash's definition in the post I was replying to.
For me, and a lot of other visually impaired people, ebooks are our regular books and are not a luxury item according to his definition. How someone chooses to define luxury is, of course, up to them.
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I'm a "her" actually.
And I don't disagree with you. Ebooks and ereaders definitely fill a need for many of the visually impaired, including some friends of mine. Luxuries often become necessities when there is a specific need that wasn't previously being adequately met.
However, I did state:
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Not books as a whole, just the electronic versions that we're discussing here - the ones where cost is an issue.
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Emphasis added just now. We're not talking about all ebooks, we're talking about ebooks over a particular price threshold or books from particular publishers. I guess the best way to explain my take on luxury items is with a comparison to food. Food is a necessity. Kobe steaks?? Not so much.
Literacy should be considered a necessity, and that includes a basic level of access to written material. But it does not necessarily include James Patterson's latest release, for example. If these publishers want to pretend their books are Kobe steak, fine. Let them. I don't think anyone will be harmed by lack of access to
those particular books, which makes them a luxury by my definition.