I must say that I love ebooks. Of the past dozen or so books I have purchased, all of them have been ebooks. I am trying to avoid paper for a number of reasons. However, a new story by Julie Bosman and Matt Richtel published in the New York Times says that I may be in the minority. In fact, the authors claim that ebooks are becoming less and less popular. I am not sure I agree, but it certainly is an interesting point of view.
The authors of the new article focus on how easily an ebook reader is interrupted. "People who read e-books on tablets like the iPad are realizing that while a book in print or on a black-and-white Kindle is straightforward and immersive, a tablet offers a menu of distractions that can fragment the reading experience, or stop it in its tracks.
"E-mail lurks tantalizingly within reach. Looking up a tricky word or unknown fact in the book is easily accomplished through a quick Google search. And if a book starts to drag, giving up on it to stream a movie over Netflix or scroll through your Twitter feed is only a few taps away."
You can read the full article at http://goo.gl/2EEFm.
NOTE: The New York Times often places articles online for two or three days, then removes them. The full article is available at http://goo.gl/2EEFm as I write these words but might disappear at any time.
I have no scientific means of verifying this story's claims or of measuring sales of ebooks versus printed books. However, I travel a lot and have noticed that passengers on airliners now seem to be reading ebooks instead of printed books by a margin of about ten-to-one. That's about the opposite of three or four years ago. Despite what is claimed in the New York Times article, I have to wonder why airline passengers are adopting the new technology so quickly while these authors claim that the general public is not.
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