Those bemoaning the rise of ebooks have created any number of conspiracy theories, usually with Amazon as the demon, but folks like Passive Guy at his The Passive Voice blog are quick to add rationality and sanity to an otherwise loud and angry discourse based largely on disinformation.
One of the worries is the loss of physical bookstores. I, too, would hate to see them go. But guess what? The best, the small indie bookstores, were already disappearing at the assaults of corporate chains. How interesting that one of these, Barnes and Noble, now becomes a good guy to those who see Amazon as a monster. At any rate, what is needed is imagination and faith in books, which after all are noted by CONTENT, not packaging.
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Ebook section at bookstore:
would adults embrace as readily as kids? |
Imagine a future bookstore. There is a large ebook section. This is made up of a computer terminals where a customer can sit down and browse for ebooks. These ebooks are stored at and sold by a site managed by the store itself -- the store sells the ebook. There needs to be some perks to make this competitive, of course. One perk is to offer a hard copy print service -- you get your ebook and a print out as well. Or maybe a perk is a credit with each purchase to apply to a future print book purchase. Use your imagination, book entrepreneurs! This can be done and moreover, an ebook section, perhaps modeled after coffee houses where everyone is using a laptop, coffee available and so on, nice music, an ebook section in a traditional bookstore has possibilities to explore.
Luddites have no imagination, of course. But someone is going to embrace the future and make it attractive, rather than whining in the dust of the inevitable.
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