[Timboli]

Here is another way things are becoming worse for reading due to ebooks.

My mother lives in a Retirement Village, along with a few hundred others.

Many of those in the village, have donated their physical books to a small number of libraries around the village.

Of course, only a smaller portion of those books are Large Print ones, so as the eyesight of the elderly in that village gradually deteriorates, they stop reading smaller print ones.

But you have to accept, that many of those books are read by a huge number of readers, and that's not even counting family and friends who visit and borrow, as I have even done. So in a very real way, that could well be a loss of many sales to a publisher and author .... all those extra people reading for free.

Now however, many of those people are using digital readers, especially iPads, so they can have a larger text size. It is also hard to get a lot of books in Large Print. Then there is a choice of what to read, which is limited despite those libraries having several hundred books when combined. And of course, they sometimes need to wait their turn.

So because the ebooks cannot usually be shared, publishers and authors are reaping the reward every time a book is recommended to another person who then decides to buy their own copy ... no other choice really, if they want to read it too.

So there is a huge change around to how things used to be.

In short, many more books are being sold, due to ebooks.

And ebooks unlike physical books, don't really cost much beyond their initial production costs. Nothing to speak of for printing, storage or transport. No damage issues, either print, storage or usage. No issue for limited reruns. Far fewer risks. Etc etc.

So why should we pay as much or more for ebooks as compared to their physical counterpart, when clearly publishers and authors are reaping a much bigger reward these days?

Most if not all of us, expected to pay less for digital versions, cost of ereader device aside, and the facts and logic certainly show they should be ... significantly so.

So what is going on then?