Some things in our society have fallen by the wayside. Take chamber pots, for example. Yes, please take them. Remember when almost every house had a TV antenna rising high from its roof? Homes that valued learning and libraries had volumes of encyclopedias. All of these icons of everyday life have fallen by the wayside. Times change. New products replace old.
Who would have believed that students could get more information from a tiny machine than twenty volumes of encyclopedias? But they can--and do.
Three years ago, a new product emerged on the market--eReaders. These handheld devices were touted as being able to hold hundreds of books downloaded from places like Amazon and Barnes & Noble. What? Replace books? No way. Who would rather use one of these contraptions than experience the feel of a book in her/his hands? We'd miss the smell of paper books, that smell that book lovers adore. These new eReaders will never catch on.
Last week an article in Time said that Amazon is now selling more eBooks than hardback books. Their sales have tripled.
The shift from paper books to electronic books is happening--and faster than we might want to consider.
The good side to this shift is that more writers can get published via eBooks. Unknown writers that large publishers would, and do, shun can now find a publishing home. Am I saying that eBooks will published poor writers? Certainly not! What I'm saying is that excellent, unknown writers, who pour great energies into polishing their manuscripts, only to be passed over for lackluster writers with a name or star power, can now have a better chance at publication via eBooks.
Things change. In the publishing arena, they are perhaps changing for the better. Now, if only someone would come out with a paper-smelling spray to spritz on these eReaders.
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