Something I've been thinking about lately:
So I have a prediction. Within a medium time-frame (4-7 years), e-readers and digital books will do to books what the ipod and mp3s did to cds. That is, they will become good, cheap, and easy enough to use that it will be super mass market and the minority of people will actually be buying physical books.
I will probably be interested in an purchasing an e-reader and reading books electronically (in parallel with normal book reading) but not until they get way better. Here's some of the things that will have to happen to get me interested:
- MUCH cheaper. I'm talking $100-$150 range.
- Bigger screen that is practically edge to edge.
- Much longer battery life - I don't need another device to plug in ALL the time.
- Ability to get subscriptions automatically downloaded to the device easily (I want magazines monthly and the local paper daily).
- Color screen so I can read magazines and comics.
- Ability to buy physical books and have them come with the electronic version.
- I may be willing to live without some of the above if the device easily surfed the web via WiFI.
I would also add in there that the books themselves should be cheaper... something more along the lines of $5-$10 a book instead of $10-$15.
ReplyDelete