My holiday in Tuscany left me questioning how I ever coped before my e-book. My Kindle became a lifesaver on holiday as it uses no data and I was able to search a travel guide that I had already downloaded to find information quick and easily. My Kindle soon became a fixture of everyday and when we weren't sure we would stop off and check what the Kindle said. Now to be perfectly honest the travel guide wasn't the best and my Kindle would have been even more useful if I downloaded a better one but it left me pondering a very serious question: Is the traditional book on its way out?
I'm torn as having been a keen reader of English Literature I always pictured my house (when I own one) as having a study with bookshelves filled with books but now my Kindle fulfils that function and takes up virtually no space. I have all my Kindle books filed by genre so that its easy to find the book I want, making me wonder if the idea of a book filled study is just a waste of space and time?
The other problem for the traditional book is that the wave of iPad's, ebooks and smart phones is attracting more followers and leaving the paper book in their wake but is this necessarily a bad thing? For years we have been told that as a nation we don't read enough so is it not heartening that many of those iPad's, ebooks and smart phones are being used to read books, just not in the traditional way.
Perhaps then it is the publishing world that has to provide hard copies as well as digital copies, they have to forsee the need to have digital copies and give people the opportunity to buy it. Also a digital copy will never go out of print and there will never be the problem that not enough books were printed.
My Kindle is now a staple in my handbag along with phone, purse etc and I now wouldn't have it any other way. I guess its a perfect example of how we have evolved and made an Ipod for books!
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