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Originally Posted by Poppaea
Well, I reckon Sex is popular, even if I don't see people doing it on public transportation 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rhadin
If 1 in 100 people own an ereader device, does that make them popular? How about 1 in 250 or 1 in 10? You need to define what constitutes popular. My personal opinion is that considering millions of the devices have been sold, manufacturers keep pumping out new ones, and ebooks outsell pbooks at Amazon, I'd say they are popular. Your not seeing them in the wild doesn't mean anything more than that you haven't seen them in the wild. My wife, for example, who loves her Sony 505 never takes it out of the house.
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^ Excellent point. What's that old saying? It's all relative?
Certainly it seems that widespread consciousness of ereaders and ebooks/digital books has increased among the masses and in the media. I would think that this site itself would make for a decent barometer of the general state of the ereader market - I have only been here a short while but it seems that every day, a goodly number of new members join up, as evidenced by the large numbers of new Introduce Yourself posts. And before I left for HK, for sure over the last few years, my own on-the-street sightings of ereaders increased noticeably in NYC.
It might be interesting if the MR powers that be did some quick calculations and chart forum signups over the last few years.
Don't know about anyone else, but even though I only recently purchased my first dedicated ereader [K3], I have been reading digitally for years on other devices, going all the way back to Palm Vx and CLIE days [remember early PRC files anybody?]. Funny, my own purchases of physical books over the last few years have not seen any significant decline, but for sure, my purchase/acquisition of digital books has increased by quite a bit.
No idea when I will ever be able to make any kind of dent in my TBR queue though.
<note to self: get cracking on that immortality thing>