Quote:
Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald
In the end, when e-books overtake paper books (and they will) will depend on economics. Unless people are voracious readers, it remains cheaper to buy (or borrow from a library) paper books, especially if people buy used or, even cheaper, buy used then trade them in when they are done with them.
The price of e-book readers needs to come down dramatically and quality and durability needs to increase (when's the last time you broke a book, rendering it unreadable, by dropping it?). People will be more likely to buy e-book readers if they are easier to read, cart around, won't break when dropped, are more reliable and are easier to use.
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The very definition of a cellphone. (With a protective case, probably). If you have one of those, you don't need a dedicated reader... something millions of people have already discovered, especially in Asia. And even if you did break it, cellphones are (usually) easily replaced, and hopefully you were smart enough to keep file backups.
Dedicated readers are, let's face it, luxury items right now, and for simply reading text, barely worth the cost and trouble. Multi-use devices are more economical, and preferred by most of the world for their utility. If you already have a multi-use device that is ebook capable, you've just removed the cost of a dedicated reader from your budget.
Point is, ebooks are already cheap to buy... especially when you consider the real costs of paper books that you will pay for later, for instance, your taxes that will go to managing landfills and cleaning the polluted air and streams from pulp manufacturing and transportation. Add convenience to the low cost, and you have a win-win that will steadily convert more readers to digital.