Quote:
Originally Posted by xg4bx
Maybe 5% ebook at most, the novelty has pretty much worn off for me.
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In 2006-2007, it was a novelty, for people who were satisfied to read Gutenberg files (whose quality is not unquestionable), non-mainstream novels, or crappy pirated OCR-stuff.
That started to change when Amazon got into this game, and in 2010, we saw a veritable explosion of available books, both high-quality free to low-cost PD material, and mainstream novels.
Now in 2013, everything I ever wanted is available as an ebook, save for a few, very old titles that'll probably be never made into an ebook. (I can't actually find new or second hand paper versions on Amazon. I expect the books to be out of print.)
eBooks are here to stay, especially if the industry drops DRM and takes care about backward compatibility (read old formats on new devices) and forward compatibility (provide a reliable way to convert old formats into new formats for new devices).
If a format survives for 25 years (starting with EPUB, today), one could get by an entire life with 2-3 formats, only converting twice: EPUB2->EPUB3->EPUB4, or EPUB2->EPUB3, and EPUB2->EPUB4.