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Future belongs to electronic books
New York, Sept 16: Don`t slam the cover on digital books just yet.
New York, Sept 16: Don't slam the cover on digital books just yet.
Readers hungry for a good page-turner will still turn to bookstores and libraries, but cheaper computers and changing consumer habits suggest that electronic books, or e-books, still have a future.
To be sure, that future is years away, particularly after Barnes & Noble Inc., the world's largest bookseller, earlier this month shook the nascent market by shutting its eBooks store. Daniel Blackman of barnesandnoble.com said downloadable books have not lived up to their hype.
"There is a market but it has not materialised to the point that we will be able to support the business," he said. As with digital music, multiple books -- say, Shakespeare's collected works -- can be stored on a memory card the size of a stick of gum, making them popular with travellers, students and professionals. They are read on hand-held devices running operating systems by Palm or Microsoft, or on a PC or notebook computer.
Readers hungry for a good page-turner will still turn to bookstores and libraries, but cheaper computers and changing consumer habits suggest that electronic books, or e-books, still have a future.
To be sure, that future is years away, particularly after Barnes & Noble Inc., the world's largest bookseller, earlier this month shook the nascent market by shutting its eBooks store. Daniel Blackman of barnesandnoble.com said downloadable books have not lived up to their hype.
"There is a market but it has not materialised to the point that we will be able to support the business," he said. As with digital music, multiple books -- say, Shakespeare's collected works -- can be stored on a memory card the size of a stick of gum, making them popular with travellers, students and professionals. They are read on hand-held devices running operating systems by Palm or Microsoft, or on a PC or notebook computer.
E-books may find their niche with tech-savvy youth unfazed by the notion of browsing literature on a screen, and the growing legion of retirement-age readers, according to Richard Doherty, research director at Envisioneering Group.
For now, e-books are an afterthought in the publishing world. Less than 500,000 electronic books were sold in the United States in 2002, compared with more than 1.5 billion printed books, estimates research firm Ipsos-Insight in Chicago.
Bureau Report