Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
As for the eBook role here, eReader prices haven't gone down as fast as I thought they would, so that they might become a preferred reading tool for lower imcome people worldwide. Bit it will come as eInks patents expire.
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This is nonsense.
1) eBooks are not priced related to costs, but what the market will bear.
2) The majority of ebooks are read on phones and tablets, not eink. Even if eink based readers were 1/2 the price many would still read on phones or tablets anyway.
3) Literacy is an issue for lower income people even in rich countries. There are paper books in libraries in those countries.
4) The majority of people in the world are poor and literacy is an issue.
5) Children in households without books tend not to read books. It perpetuates.
6) Poorer people might have a feature phone but it might not support reading.
7) There are maybe close to 100,000 public domain books. Gutenberg alone has about 70,000. Those are accessible to anyone with a smart phone.