Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Ereading - The Future of Reading

Over the last decade the advent of the electronic book, or ebook, has taken over the publishing industry. This new format allows for you to now carry along not just one book, but an entire library around with you where ever you might be traveling. Where before, a couple of paperbacks might have taken up your entire purse, backpack or briefcase, but now using an ebook reader you can have those same books and a dozen more in a machine smaller than even one of those paperbacks.

As this technology evolves, it is even allowing for your reading to move from one piece of technology to another. That means that you might have been reading your book on your computer this afternoon, then on your commute home continuing your novel using your smartphone, and at home enjoying your book while sitting in a comfortable chair with your Kindle or Nook. An ebook can be as close as you want it at any point in time.

The machines themselves are growing in features, including built in footnotes and annotations so you can see what the author was thinking when he wrote specific passages, linkable bibliographies that allow for you to see the references made with a click of your finger, as well as the ability to look up words that you aren't sure the definition of. Before, any one of these things would have taken you out of the book reading experience, but now they are all a simple part of the process.

A lot of the power in this format is that you can get a book in a matter of moments. Where before, you would have had to go to your local bookstore, or even waited while your favorite online retailer shipped it to you, now all of these books are available to you from your reader (assuming it has a wireless connection to the internet). You search through their online store, purchase your book, and in a matter of moments you are enjoying a book on the beach.

Some people will always stick to the traditional ink and paper books. They might find comfort in the smell of the paper or the heft of the book in their hands. The truth is though that more and more people are getting their hands on ebook readers because, much like with the advent of mp3 players with large amounts of hard drive space, people like to have options, and everything about ebooks is about having the choice to read whatever you want whenever you want.

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