How eBooks Changed My Reading Habits #
Before the Amazon Kindle, the eBook world wasn't very popular, just like the digital music before the iPod revolution. I got my hands on a Kindle DX two years ago. I had to order my one from eBay since there weren't any international versions of the DX, nor I could buy one on Amazon from Brazil. Since then my whole reading habits have changed.
I was't a "monthly reader" because it was a bit of a hassle going to a book store, finding a good book, buying and going home; this process takes a lot of time, and time is something pretty rare these days. But after I got my Kindle, everything changed! It was magical! I could go to Amazon.com, browse a vast amount of books, get recommendations, and, in a single click, they were automatically delivered to my Kindle. This killed the old-fashioned way of getting a book just by the fact it was simple, fast and comfortable.
Today, we have big companies joining the movement: companies like Apple, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon, not to mention the starters: eReader, Iliad, Sony... This is making this new market grow in an exponential way. People that never had contact with eBook readers started using iBooks on their iPads and now love the experience.
I know that this revolution is a big leap forward in the book industry, but I see some problems today. Things like:
- The price for certain eBooks are almost the same as the paperback versions
- Lack of different languages to choose from. This is so problematic that for certain books I go to a store to buy them in my language so I can understand it better, since English isn't my mother language
- Fragmentation: Some eBooks are available in all the major formats (Mobi, ePub and PDF), but some aren't and even on the massive Kindle DX screen a PDF document isn't the same as a native Mobi eBook
If the industry figures out how to solve those problems I'm sure that only people who really have the need of holding a paper won't get into the eBook revolution.
This article was imported from my old blog . Some things may be broken.