As I read my local newspaper and see that another two local Borders stores are closing, I have to wonder: Are books going the way of VHS? Are they going to disappear?? For the first time that I can remember, my local community, which is quite populated, will no longer have a bookstore. B. Dalton disappeared first, then Waldenbooks, and now Borders. The nearest Barnes and Noble is about fifteen miles away through heavy traffic. I purchase most of my books online nowadays, so I’m not completely devastated by the loss, but I’m going to have to find another way of purchasing my monthly dose of Combat Aircraft, Air Forces Monthly, Fly Past , and all those other outstanding UK publications. Can’t run by the Borders on the way home from work anymore…
I really don’t know how I feel about this. I love having actual REAL copies of books lining my shelves. I pay $29.95 for one, I can hold it in my hands, get it autographed if the opportunity arises, and I can also sell it later for some extra cash if need be. I guess it also depends on the type of book. I am willing to purchase hardcover bestsellers in an electronic format, but NOT my aircraft reference material. I just can’t fathom paying all that money for “books” that I cannot actually touch. And I’m sure all those “books” can be accidentally lost from the gizmos memory. On the other hand, when I look at all the space that my books and magazines take up, I can’t help but think of all the extra models I could build and display in that space.
If the transition from hardcopy books to electronic media does occur, I hope it goes better than the VHS to DVD move. I can’t begin to name the number of great movies that have never made it to DVD but were available on VHS (can you say Strategic Air Command?).
I don’t think books will disappear in the long run,not “our” kind, anyway
to take over,PC files and CD’s will have to reach some method of being able to do what even the cheapest picture books can do
have 6 open at once, able to move so that “this detail” lays up against “that detail”,while having “that” color scheme pinned up as a master build goal
Someday probably, when all of us who grew up with paper books die off, but I think they will be with us for quite sometime still. I read an article a few weeks ago and ebooks account for less than 10% of “popular” (paper back novels and such) book purchases.
I think physical book stores are having issues due to internet sellers like Amazon, more than ebooks. I went into one of the Borders that is closing and had everything 20% off. Even with the markdown I could get the books for less at Amazon and with the insane lines probably get them faster too.
While ebooks get a lot of attention publishing is evolving too, there are many options for print on demand (Lulu etc) now, which from the publishers side offer most of the benefits of ebooks (no storage, or large up front printing costs). This actually makes it easier for small guys to do books on limited demand subjects.
I just bought a Kindle, and I don’t think I’ll ever buy a paperback book again. I love books as much as anyone, and maybe more. I collect old books, some go back to the 1700s, but modern fiction just isn’t worth the money the publishers are charging. I’ve been buying ebooks for $0.99 to $2.99, which is a much better price.
Non-fiction, especially picture heavy tomes, are horrible on ereaders, so they’ll be around for a while. Expect the price to go up as the publishing houses slowly realize that their market is gone.
Fermis,you have cassette tapes??? Geeze I still have 8-tracks and players that work lol… My 72 Chevy pick-up had an 8-track in it and everybody made fun of me…
Never!!! I know that books will become more difficult to obtain, but they will not disappear as VHS is sure to do. After all not all the world is plugged in and has high tech, and as the situation in Japan now shows, technology can and will fail at times and paper will still be there. I sort of feel like that old lawyer on one of the Star Trek original series episodes who would not give up his books, even in the hige tech 23rd century… a high tech device will never match the simple feel of a book in your hand on a quiet chair somewhere.
Didnt even have to read the post, just read the title. Answer is No, digital media will never replace books. There is nothing like the feel of a book in your hand, being able to see your progress with your marker, the smell that new and old books give off. Books are what make civilization possible IMHO, without them we would never have progressed past the bronze age, if that far.
Books have been my life blood but then I come from the late 1930’s when libraries & books were the only reference in life apart from conversation. I have in the region of 800 books on WW11 & delight in reading…
But it is inevitable that web information & e books will take a toll on the written word in books.
However an experience in my life job occupation has a parallel. I ran an architectural practice & for 45 years all information was placed on tracing paper by pencil or pen. All hand driven.
I then trespassed into CAD computer assisted drawing. Incredible in some ways a retrograde step in others. One thing was certain there was no going back.
But some have stayed (or is it staid) with analogue drawing. Also those CAD minded still sketch as it is easier as CAD laborious in this direction.
But as with books as with architectural drawings they are a means to an end they are the purveyor of the goods. It is the authors & the architects who produce the goods & are the important factor not the transport.
Rather like a vinyl record all but extinct when you now can carry with you all your music library on a mini data piece. So with books. When we are able to carry in our pocket a small piece of technology which will contain thousands of book contents & which will open up into a digital book for us to read in our hands at any location then the days of books will become similar to vinyl records. We will buy data in place of a published book. Sad really.
VHS is an analog storage medium that is both easily susceptible to damage and degrades over time. Digital video delivers significantly better quality and the files themselves can essentially last forever.
Books, on the other hand, yes they degrade, but they are a physical presence. They’re like printed photographs. Even now that digital photography has all but taken over, we still print photos. I think the market for paper books will shrink substantially in coming years, but I think we will ALWAYS have paper books in some form or fashion.
To me, it comes down to the type of book. Honestly, I’d love to have all my reference and history books digitized and able to be instantly called up on an iPad or something. I love the way they look on the shelves, especially some of those massive Oxford classical history tomes, but really, instant search, the ability to overlay historical maps on Google Earth, to zoom in on pictures, and such would be amazingly great.
When it comes to books I actually read page-by-page, I still prefer paper, but with two young kids, my book-every-two-weeks habit has slipped to a two-books-every-year habit. And I have every intention of giving eBooks a serious spin when my iPad 2 ships.
Also, as someone who has beat their head against the publishing industry for several years, I really like the democratization that eBooks bring to publishing. Maybe one of these days I’ll get around to publishing my Punic War novel on the Amazon marketplace or whatever it’s called one of these days.
Dude, you’ve still got my 8-track of “inagodadavida” that I loaned you 3 months ago - whassup?!
It would seem that books will eventually leave us… but here’s a counter-theory for you. How much electricity/power are we consuming with all the gizmos that display electronic books… is that less sustainable than real, paper, books in the long run? Don’t get political!! (There, now that I’ve thrown a porkchop into the dog pound I’ll skee-daddle! [whstl] )
a public High School. a good 30 kids in a class, a few hundred classes in the school, all needing Books.
Lets see now… a bunch of insane Teenagers with hard back textbooks that can take ALOT of abuse, or giving them a expensive electronic reader that they take home with them… Which will end better, you tell me
Hey Aagranata, I had the same problem with the book stores. That’s why I got subscriptions to them. I get Fine Scale, Combat Aircraft, and even the UK mags too. Much less hassle.
Follow the money. Textbooks are already a racket. Cost of an iPad plus the cost of textbook “apps”, minus the cost of printing and shipping millions of copies = better margins for the publishers.
I think it is a changing in the market more than anything. Think of how many of us have spent more money on-line for our model supplies as opposed to visiting our LHS. I would put my ratio at around 90% myself. Sadly many of those LHS have declined and disappeared recently.
Hate to break it to the guy who is breaking to someone else…
Trying that system in several test schools in NB, including my daughter’s middle school. No text books was the battlecry, these kids are growing up electronic anyway, it’s all going on netbooks, networked inside the facility, they carry a netbook home for projects, even went so far as to hire an IT professional to do nothing but maintain the netbooks & network, thereby adding 50K or so to the schools budget…
Until 4-5 were broken in the first week. Now the standard line at home is “I couldn’t bring my homework because it’s on the netbook - which isn’t allowed out of the school anymore…” Solution? No homework!! How smart these kids are going to be!! Frig, I wish I could leave my work at work!!! [bnghead]