Quote:
Originally Posted by ardeegee
Wonder how long it takes people who "can't afford" an ebook reader to spend $200 on cigarettes? On beer? On cable TV? On junk food? On sporting events? It isn't what money you have-- it is how you choose to spend it.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nomesque
"so expensive that only a select few can afford it" ?????
*boggle*
OK, maybe my viewpoint is thoroughly skewed because I'm not in the USA... over here a paperback often costs $17-20. A paperback classic (out of copyright) is often around $10. So a device which costs the same as 20 new books doesn't strike me as being particularly elitist, ya know? Especially when I wander around my low-income city streets and see all the ipods... 
I'd go so far as to venture that the exact opposite will happen - that ebook readers will go mainstream and we'll find MORE people reading, not less. Partly because the shorter ebooks - ones which would never be published as DTBs because they're too low on wordage - will perfectly suit those with short attention spans and slow reading speeds.
Edited to add: I acknowledge that I'm writing from a very Western-world kind of viewpoint, where every house has a TV and the vast majority of houses have at least one computer... but surely one of the beauties of digital publishing is the possibility of printing it onto standard printer paper if needed? |
This and that. I am by no means rich. I'm a librarian at a community college, for Pete's sake. I don't go out to bars and concerts every weekend and I rarely go to the theater to see a movie. I have a Kindle Paperwhite that I love. Like Nomesque, I realize that, though I am not rich by the standards of the United States or Western Europe, I am far better-off than most of the world.