AAR

[Love2Win]

I'm all for new technology. Heck, I couldn't make a living at home without the Internet. But now I face a niggling little worry. The kindle reader and others of its ilk are selling well but still very pricey. Downloads are great and certainly a convenient reading take-along, but will they replace the good old printed word in the near future?

Of course, they (the ubiquitous "they") said that about personal computers too a few years ago. We'd no longer need paper. But computers crash and even laptops don't always replace the security of holding a printed document or book in your hands. Besides, I still like to reread some books years after I read them the first time, and I can go straight to my bookshelves and pluck the volumes out. An e-reader has limited storage and I doubt I could find the book I'd want to read again a decade later on an e-reader.

I understand that Harlequin has opened a division for e-publishing only. For those books, of course, the kindle will come in handy (although I assume e-books can be downloaded to a PC too). Recently, I told my agent that I was only interested in deals that at least combined print with e-books instead of relying on e-publishing only.

So what do you think the future holds? Am I a hopeless anachronism? Will e-readers replace good old-fashioned print? Your thoughts please.
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"I write only when I'm inspired and I make it a point to be inspired every morning at nine o'clock." - Peter deVries

[dick]

I hope not...at least until someone finds a way to make old eyes young again. Digital print of any kind makes my eyes burn and water. And, for me at least, holding a book gives a tactile pleasure that a mechanical device just can't replicate.

[Charlotte McClain]

I don't think we'll see what happened to records happen to books. E books are great for a lot of things, beach reads that you're never going to want to look at again, textbooks, magazines. I think at the very outside most things will convert to digital, but there will be print on demand for those things you really want in your library.
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Angsty romance with scattered humor.
My Faux Website

[Audrey]

I don't think books will ever be completely replace by an e-reader. I know that books can be ruined too, but can you imagine something happening to your reader and losing all of them?

My son keeps saying we're not as techno as we should be, but I am trying to explain to him that it's experience - until technology is dependable, there's no way I'm going totally in. I've got the experience and know myself well enough to know the things that will improve my life, and the things that are just extra silly toys, for me, at least. Take digital photos for example, among other things, I love the way you can take ten shots and delete nine of them to get the best one. But I'm worried about losing them, so I have them in four different places. There's no way I'm losing all the shots of my grandbabies! So when I have new ones, I have to add them in four places, what a pain.

I think Charlotte's right, digital is great for disposable, but for things that need to be kept, not so much. Especially since the technology keeps changing. Who needs to take home movies, pictures, books and keep switching them all to something else in a few years?

[Mark]

As someone who keeps all books I buy, I ran out of space to build more bookshelves a few years ago, so ebooks came just in time for me (first Sony Reader in 2006). I now buy hundreds of ebooks per year and only a few in printed form.
DRM and possible future format changes are issues, but not enough to prevent me from loving ebooks. I make sure all my ebook files are included in my regular backups.

[Elaine S]