The Future of Books

E-books, ebooks, electronic books, digital books...how ever you want to call them, they are slowly taking over the readers market. E-books are available in various file formats, so everyone with a computer, laptop, ereader or even a smartphone is able to build his or her own digital library of e-books. While traveling or on holiday you will be able to bring a collection of books with you and it will only be the size of one paperback when using an ereader.

Literally everything you can think of is available as an e-book. Fiction and non-fiction, in every category. I am wondering how long the actual bookstores will be around for and even most of these stores have an online shop. I guess after the MP3 music files it would only be a matter of time before books would go digital as well. I'm sure collectors items and specific books will always be available, but it will not take much longer before only the somewhat older generations are the only ones buying actual books from a store in the city center or at the mall. The internet generation mostly prefers the internet for their shopping, so the e-books market and competition will probably grow sky high.

Like normal books e-books are copywrited and are provided in file formats that are protected from being altered and in some cases even from being printed. So no real difference there compared to real books. You buy or download a book in digital format with cover, table of contents, everything.

I think we all see the advantage of e-books compared to normal books. They do not take up as much space in your bag and they are a lot cheaper. If people would decide to buy an ereader then that would be a relatively expensive device, but you will have a lot of books stored in it. The future of books will be a digital future available to everyone. A new reading age.

A. Stoelinga
E-books4you