The Future of Books
The future of books The past decade has seen the unparalleled development of electronic devices. And the subversive popularity of e-books plays a crucial role in this process. Nowadays, it’s quite common to see a portable iPad instead of piles of heavy books in a teenager’s backpack. An increasing number of people prefer to tap on screens rather than turn paper pages. Because of this mounting craze, some people anticipate that with the looming momentum e-books will ultimately take the place of traditional print books and dominate the market, which has stirred up a heated debate. From my point of view, I really doubt such a pessimistic judgment of the outlook of paper books. People have been using paper books for thousands of years. In gratitude to paper books for initiating us into the world of knowledge, we have formed a deep-rooted attachment to them, which stays on inwardly all the while. So it’s hardly feasible to abandon this habit radically. Actually, paper books have already become a part of reading itself. How can you let those ardent readers who will go through fire and water for paper books give up the smell of ink and the touch of papers? Nevertheless, those manufacturers salivating over prospects for e-books keep telling us there are a sizable number of advantages in order to plunge customers into the craze and boost sales. But if you consider their recommendations carefully, you can uncover that e-books are not completely ideal choices. Firstly, they say that e-books are much cheaper. Apparently, they make no mention of the fact that e-readers are expensive. What’s more, let’s take iPad as an example. Apple Inc has already shipped three generations of iPad. So a lot of consumers keep trading up almost annually regardless of the high price, which amounts to a waste of money to some extent. Secondly, some people say that e-books own better portability. In most cases, however, we only need to carry one or two books with us, which is not that