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The Printed Book Is Dying, Digital Texts Are More Important To Us Now

Digital books or eBooks (short for electronic books) are becoming more and more prominent in today’s book market. eBooks alone(not including other digital texts) took up 9% of the book market in 2010, since then the numbers can only have increased with the release of the iPad, a new kindle eBook reader and more tablet computers. Today digital texts can be read on just about any electronic device; phones, computers, tablet computers and dedicated eBook readers are just some of the many ways of reading digital texts. The printed book is dying, slowly but surely digital texts will take over the book market and printed books will be set aside as collectors items.

Nowadays one of the reasons digital texts are the preferred way of storing texts is because unlike physical books, digital texts don’t degrade from a lot of use. Digital texts last longer, a single hard drive is easier to keep track of and it is super simple to make backups of the digital books. Physical books have their advantages but digital texts are still the better way of keeping a book/text for a prolonged period of time. A good example of people choosing digital texts over printed is on http://amazon.com/, a spokesperson said, “This year (2010) we have sold more eBooks than hard cover books.” Although that does not include soft cover books it is still a notable milestone.

Another reason digital texts mean more to us now is because to store texts physically takes up a lot of room, but to store them digitally you need a relatively much smaller amount of space. Also for the space you need to store one physical book you could have 1 big hard drive to store millions. Of course you wouldn’t have the joy of a home library with digital books, but you would save money, trees and space. For extra precaution you could store the hard drive in a fireproof, waterproof and apocalypse proof safe, you definitely couldn’t do that for millions of physical books!

eBooks also cost a lot less than physical books, this to some would be the turning point of their decision, eBooks can cost up to 50% less than physical books, mainly because you don’t have to pay for the materials to make the book. Many people don’t think of books as something you pay money for because you can borrow them for free whenever you want at the local library, so many people won’t be willing to pay a lot of money for them, if they are willing to pay at all. Books are seen by many as things you use for assignments at school and nothing else, people that think like this would rather borrow a real book for free rather than spend a little and get an electronic version of the book.

Overall eBooks cost less, take up less room and will stay in the same pristine condition forever. On the other hand the lack of actually having a physical book and the need for electronic equipment could be the big reason people don’t buy digital texts. The printed book is losing its share of sales but digital texts still only take up 9% of the market. Printed books will live on for years to come, but eventually, eBooks will take over the book market.