Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
My local news had a short piece that was bent on declaring ebooks a fad that is on the decline. Viewers were tweeting/emailing their preferences to the station all morning.
What I found particularly telling (and quite humorous) were the scads of people claiming that while they saw advantages to both, they preferred the physical book experience. When asked how they'd read their last book, however, the vast majority of those pbook-preferring-readers-who-own-ereaders responded "ebook".
So it would seem that many who claim to prefer pbooks over ebooks, don't always prefer them enough to eschew the convenience of ebooks when it boils right down to it.
Polls about ebooks vs pbooks (or ereaders vs tablets) are meaningless--not because of the poll (although I'm sure that plays a part as well)--but because many readers simply aren't aswering the questions honestly. They're too concerned with saying the "right" thing, or toeing a line they very publically drew in the sand in the past.
Now I'm sure everyone here has been utterly straightforward and honest one-hundred percent of the time, but there's a hell of a lot of people voluntarily buying/reading ebooks that are saying they "prefer" pbooks. I've a sneaky feeling there's a fair number of people who say they prefer dedicated, eink ereaders who find themselves using them less and less, too. 
The future will wonder why there was such a stink at all. |
The other thing one sees in polls and surveys is that people answer the question asked, which may mean different things to different people. For example, I might say I prefer a paper book, but I use ebooks because I don't want to use reading glasses all the time. Or I prefer paper books, but I buy ebooks because I can download and read the book in the time it would take to have the book shipped to me. So prefer and do could very easily be two different things. (note, those are examples rather than my actual preferences).