Is it time to embrace the e-book?

Is it time to embrace the e-book?

Please leave me some comments on this article! I don't often ask, but I could use your advice on this issue.
Maybe it's time for me to dig deep behing, coach cushions, under coaches and count stacks of change towards getting a Kindle(?) or what do you suggest, PLEASE.

Could printed pages one day be a thing of the past?

When electronic books first came onto the market, some thought it spelt the end for the printed page.

But following a flurry of headlines, and prophesies of doom from the publishing industry, the revolution in downloadable literature failed to materialise.

However, despite scepticism from some technology experts that the tactile satisfaction of the paper book has not been successfully replicated, it now seems that the e-book is starting to take off.

The Amazon "kindle" e-book sold out in the United States within a few hours on its first run. Bookseller Borders' iLiad e-book is selling well and the much-hyped Sony Reader is due out in September.

"It has been spoken about for a long time but things are actually starting to happen," says Julie Howkins, head of e-commerce at Borders.

"Publishers are beginning to think seriously about their e-book strategy."

'Books breed overnight'

Two literary professionals put the e-book to the test over the last few weeks, with surprisingly positive results.

"You forget about the technology if the story is good," says author Naomi Alderman.

"It just becomes invisible."

Kathryn Hughes, Professor of Life Writing at University of East Anglia admitted that she was quite happy to take her e-book to bed with her.

What is more, it solves the problem of holiday reading when after the first week all you have left is "a battered copy of Vogue from three months ago and something on sale in the local boutique, written in German."

Now you can just nip down to the local internet connection and top up your reading.

While Hughes admits that "there is a visceral quality that you miss with an old book", it is the question of space that pleases her most.

"I find that my books breed overnight," she says.

"I can control my environment now. I'm not going to live in this ever-expanding library."

What is slowing the take off of the e-book, says Alderman, is that the book has become a "celebrity object".

"People are fetishising the paper book, they are fetishising literature," she says.

It is not an iPod moment for books Julie Howkins, Borders

But with over 25,000 classic books, whose copyright has run out, available for download from the website Project Gutenburg, Alderman is emphatic about the impact e-books will eventually have.

"They represent a democratisation of literature even more important than the public library," she says.

No substitute

But before you start a bonfire on your bookshelves, a word of caution.

While in the US there are an increasing number of new books available online, publishers in the UK have been slow to release their books in an electronic format.

E-book readers are still expensive and there is no agreement in the industry over a single format for downloads.

"It is not an iPod moment for books," says Julie Howkins.

"The devices are coming on the market, but there still isn't a great deal of content.

"It will be a considerable time before e-books compete with the paper book."

Even the most gadget savvy experts are sceptical about an e-book revolution.

Patrick Goss, editor of technology website TechRadar.com says that the new devices are certainly exciting and may well be useful in certain circumstances - searching text books and saving space in your luggage, for example.

But they are still no substitute for the real thing, he says.

"The book is the most perfect use of technology humanity has ever invented.

"They are cheap to mass produce, contain a huge amount of easily accessible data and all you need to use them is a small amount of light."

"There is a real tactile pleasure in reading books that you just don't get reading from a screen."

Paper-free future?

A sigh of relief then for fans of paper and print, for now at least. But there is no telling how people's reading habits will change in the future.

"The younger generation have spent their formative years reading from screens. We don't really know how they are going to react," says Goss.

What is more, he says that there is no telling how far the technology is going to advance.

"It is perfectly conceivable that in the future we could have something that looks like a book, feels like a book, reads like a book and with separate paper-thin pages like a book, but which uses e-ink instead of the normal kind."