Quote:
Originally Posted by murraypaul
People still read books a lot. eBooks are not seen as a replacement for books. (By many people.)
Several of the most popular board games are now available as iOS apps, btw.
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I find this statement somewhat bemusing and perplexing.
"eBooks are not seen as a replacement for books. (By many people.)"
I don't deny that some people still prefer printed books, and buy printed books, but I balk at the way the sentence is expressed.
Personally, I think eBooks replace books if you have the digital book. You will not generally buy the book in both forms, so if you have a digital copy of "Moby Dick" you most probably won't buy the printed book "Moby Dick." Now it may be possible that you already had a Moby Dick book on a shelf or in a box somewhere, and chose a new digital copy for convenience, or because you didn't like the smell of the old book, or even can't find it. But irregardless you have in effect "replaced" the printed copy. I believe that you will seldom buy a printed book if you have available an eBook of that title.
Now there still may be occasion to buy a printed copy of a book that is available in digital form. I do this quite often. I will buy a used copy of a book I wish to use as a reference or background for writing. It will cost usually say .01USD +3.99USD= 4.00USD and that will be cheaper than the 9.99USD for a digital copy. The second reason is that for a reference book, I will mark pages with book marks, passages with a line marker, or even leave the book out on a table open as I reference it from time to time. You can see the old used copy is more useful and quickly accessed in this respect.
I also buy used books just for reading, sometimes an old library copy of a new book I want to read because the politics of the authors, publishers, and legacy book stores require that the digital form of the book be more expensive that it should be and that doesn't change due to the time the book has been on the market . I read a lot of books, so I can wait a year or two for any one book, for it to reduce in cost to say $4 or $5 used rather that $9.99 in digital form.
Anyway, I find that eBooks are replacing printed books a lot, but of course there are still a lot of printed books being sold, new and used.
To say that they are not seen as a replacement by many people needs further exploration. Are those "many people" growing smaller and smaller in number each year. Are more books being sold as eBooks each year than printed books. Is the percentage of eBooks growing each year. Are the total eBooks growing each year and are the total printed books decreasing each year.
I would say that eBooks are replacing printed books, but the replacement is not yet complete. That might be a better way of expressing that sentence I quoted up above.