Quote:
Originally Posted by kindlekitten
no, I completely disagree. this is moving into the new reality. while there will be some people who will stay in the hardback venue forever, having the ebooks helps with emerging different lifestyles. we are living longer and differently than we ever did before and have a lot of different options. people are traveling, doing the RV thing, living aboard various ships. having to be tied to libraries, book stores, and even to some extent computers isn't going to work with a lot of these different lifestyles.
even without that, it is a reality we are going to become accustomed to just as we no longer expect to see stacks of CDs or shelves of LPs in living rooms. to a large extent we are becoming (and will be) the new hardback market. we will have to be catered to. we already know what the option is if we aren't!  |
I think we just settle on a difference of opinions, then. You seem to be under the impression that ebooks are to paper books what digital music is to CDs. I'm of the mindset that the relationship is more like that of Blu-ray to standard def - there's room in the market for both to exist without one annihilating the other.
I stand on the reasoning that eBooks have been around for several years, and if they were going to cannibalize paper book sales (the way digital music did to CDs), it would be more apparent and prevalent than it is today. The recording industry saw double digit percentage drops in CD sales; I'm no expert, but I don't think we've yet seen a similar behavior in eBooks. Yes, many people will immediately cite the format wars and lack of standardization as contributing factors to the slow growth of the eBook market (and it's all true, of course). Simply put, there was a much higher demand for digital music before the industry regulated and standardized itself (hence the high rate of pirated music) than there comparatively is for ebooks vs. paper books. I know that all of us here on MR are fanatics, but be open to the thought that maybe the rest of the world isn't - yet.