I personally was not an avid reader until I bought my Kindle in April 2009. There's something about holding a 400 page book that seemed overwhelming to me. Whereas holding that same book on a 1/2 inch device seemed more appealing. For me the idea of reading was mind or over matter. Today I'm happy to say that I'm now an avid reader and since I received by Kindle I've read over 300 books!
Amazon announced in January 2011 that for the first time the sales of ebooks has surpassed that of paperbacks. In a statement the company announced "Amazon.com is now selling more Kindle books than paperback books. Since the beginning of the year, for every 100 paperback books Amazon has sold, the company has sold 115 Kindle books. Additionally, during this same time period the company has sold three times as many Kindle books as hardcover books." From these numbers it looks like more and more people are getting on board with reading on an ereader versus the traditional route of paperback reading.
But why are people making the switch. One of the biggest reasons that people are making the switch to ebooks is that they have the ability to change the size of the font and zoom the text. On an Amazon form there was a discussion on which people liked better, ebooks or paperbacks, Jody talked about why she prefers ebooks, "first of all it is because I can't adjust the font size on paper books. Since my eyesight is affected by diabetes, there are many days I have to have very large fonts to read, and other days I can see with medium-large - but never the small font in paper books any longer. For a person who read voraciously since I was about 3 years old, not being able to read would be devastating to me." Another huge reason people are making the switch is the ability to carry multiple books with them anytime, anywhere but also having all those books on one little device gets ride of the "clutter" of books lying around the home. With ability to carry around over 1800 books on one device it doesn't matter where you are you or what you're in the mood to read, you will always have options!
Or they could be just like me and the thought of trying to get through 1440 pages of War and Peace scares the living day lights out of them!
There are still some books that are at times better viewed in the traditional paperback/hardback form such as textbooks. But as time goes on those too are being changed and updated to be better viewed on electronic devices. Textbooks are starting to be written so that when they are viewed with a device there are videos embedded within the text so if the chapter is on lions living in the wild in Africa they could have videos attached showing how they hunt in pacts, the group family dynamic and the environment in which they live.
Ebooks have started to take off and even the most reluctant authors are publishing their works as ebooks now. Just look at J.K. Rowling with the Harry Potter books. She was adamantly against publishing her work as an ebook for over 10 years and sadly she paid a huge price in terms of piracy because of it. But on March 27th, 2012 she released all her books as ebooks for the world to LEGALLY buy. That shows the power of ereaders and ebooks. People want to read, so let them...don't limit how it's done but enhance it by offering it in as many ways as possible!
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