Quote:
Originally Posted by JasmineJasmine
"Ebooks are More Accessible". Heavily disagree here unless you are rich. Inner City poor cant afford a kindle and to buy all the ebooks. They can go into a library and read all they want for free though, so paper books are far more accessible. Until there is a program to give free e-readers (with free GSM access like some kindles have) to all citizens and force companies to have free lending to these e-readers, Paper books will always win. And honestly this is really needed, IF we are a true society we should be clamoring for Amazon to open up an ebook library and a program to give free GSM kindles to the poor to help spread knowledge. Or they can give money and infrastructure to local libraries to help with this.
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While I agree about the affordability of the Kindle, many people in this demographic have mobile phones. And you can read on a mobile phone.
Why is it that people are always clamoring for the other guy to open their wallet and give stuff away? If you want someone to distribute free (or cheap) ereaders to the poor start up the program yourself. Put some effort into it. Put your time into it. Put your own money into it. Get donors. Do the work.
Or, if this was a really important subject to you, you would have done some research and discovered that there are already some programs aimed at ebooks and the poor out there in the U.S. (there are threads about this on this forum). Or was this just an off the cuff remark?
Talk is cheap.
And how are ebooks different than physical books in this matter? If the companies should be forced to give free ereaders and ebooks to everyone (yes, all 322 million Americans), then why shouldn't they be forced to give away physical books to everyone? Or even just the libraries? In fact, the publishers charge more when selling to libraries then to the public.
How are the people involved in this program going to be paid? Anything that involves distributing physical goods to 322 million people is going to require a lot of people to do the work. Are we going to force them to 'volunteer'? Who's going to pay the authors? Or are they going to forced to 'volunteer' also?
And why should the Kindles be GSM? GSM is expensive. Can't the poor just go somewhere where there is free WiFi, like their local library (where they are already going to get physical books)?
Why should this free giveaway be limited only to citizens, are you posit? Many of the poor people in America are not citizens. Why do you want to discriminate against these poor people just because they weren't born in the U.S.?
What does 'if we are a true society' mean? America is the society it is. If you want to change it you have to put the work in.
Edit:
I see from another thread that you are an author who sells books (yes, they're colouring books, but they are books all the same). Have you gone to your local inner city and given away your books?