Lit Will reading through traditional methods slowly go away

Will reading through traditional methods (novels in book form) slowly fade away over time or will they always be there. More and more people seem to be using a kindle or nook to read these days. Book stores around where I live have had to close because the sells just aren't good enough anymore (infact I have heard the only reason barnes&Nobles has stayed open is because it sells books through the nook).

I think I will always still try to read through traditional methods as long as they still continue to have the selection they do now as reading through a nook or kindle would be too much like sitting at a computer screen in my opinion and reading a website off of the internet.

 

I doubt it will ever fully go away, but it's fading, when people actually read. Personally, I prefer reading a physical book over a digital one.

 

I think people are reading just as much as they ever were but I think the way they are reading is changing. I still think there are a lot more people who read all day then there are people who watch tv all day long.

 

I do both but will hold on to the physical copies for as long as I can.

 

A lot probably depends on how long it takes them to cut the costs of providing more complicated material in e-reader format.

Novels? Those are easy. They're just words on a page.

But textbooks? Things with large double-page diagrams? Colour comic books? Those things are all going to require either bigger, more expensive e-readers, as while you could do all that on a desktop computer monitor, I don't see people wanting to lose the ability to hold a "comic book" in their hands, so although novels might increasingly move to Kindles and e-readers, I can see the actual existence of printed media taking sometime before the electronic devices develop enough to completely replace them economically.

 

I will always remember the first time I held the Labyrinth of Evil, Revenge of the Sith, The Unifying Force, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows hard backs in my hands. Looking up a book on a nook/kindle won't compare to that I feel.

 

Comics will probably always have a strong physical presence. One of the big things they have going for them is collectability and resale value. You can't resell a digital comic. And they certainly won't appreciate in value like a physical one would.

 

Will the move to digital formats change the amount of profits there are to be made in becoming an author. They can still easily tell which works are selling the best but I do know authors make a different amount of money for hardbacks and paperbacks.

If it becomes less profitable we might see more authors latching on to already established franchises and if it becomes more profitable we might see fewer authors doing it.

 

But would you read something like, say, Elfquest on a tablet? (Albeit they're only available digitally at the moment, there's clearly a reason why they've been re-coloured and re-issued multiple times.)

I expect the text would become too small to be practical, because Elfquest bridges the distinction between "prose" and a "comic" due to how much sheer narration it frequently has, which would be a pain to read on an e-reader unless you kept having to zoom in all the time, which would take longer and probably get tedious very quickly. A lot of the mangas I've read are similar, as they're not as standard-form as most Western comic books, which makes having a One-Size-Fits-All tablet screen not necessarily work with the various shapes and sizes that some comics have needed to be in printed form.

That's where I feel there'll always be a distinction between mass market material, and those that are designed with art in mind as much as profits, as some comics just don't work the way they were intended unless presented in that form. If you take Peter Rabbit, Beatrix Potter was explicit with her publishers about how she was willing to see them printed, right down to the colour of the paper, the size of the page, and so on.

 

Anakinfan if they have it available on kindle you should really try to check out some of The Walking Dead comics. It has some great storyteling and the comics aren't nearly as disgusting as the tv show is (hard to make it as gory when it is in black and white and on paper).

 

Hey now, I've found some black and white drawings way scarier than anything I've seen on a TV screen.

 

Oh no it actually isn't about a bunch of people running around slashing zombies at all. Infact I held off getting the tv show off of netflix for probably about a year because I thought it might be just another zombie slasher flick like we see in all those zombie movies.

TWD is more about people trying to survive in a post apocalyptic world and all the psychological affects that would go along with it. The zombies are just the backdrop of it all.

The comic started back in 2003 or 2004 and they have two compendiums out already (each compendium has 48 issues). Compendium 3 will probably be released in another year or two. I'm actually still on the first compendium as I'm never real quick about going through books and what not.

 

According to futurists circa 1991, paper books are already a thing of the past by now.

I always prefer Blank Reg of "Max Headroom" calling them "nonvolatile storage mediums". Plus, their power consumption requirements can't be beat.

 

I don't know about in general, but within Star Wars, I think the days of books as the main medium to expand the universe is over. It's going to be new movies and TV series from here on in, with the books following them closely. IMHO.

 

I would much rather have the hard copy books, especially the comics, the latter so I don't have to zoom in all the time to read what they're saying. I like seeing it all on one page. But for the novels there's just no way I can justify paying that hardcover price.

 

I tend to lean both ways on this. I love to read regardless of what the book is on though. I own a Nook and have probably 170 books on it, which I probably would only have gotten in physical form about a third of due to space to store the books in my house. I do tend to purge my books from time to time based on re-readability, but I still struggle to get rid of books as a whole. The ebooks have allowed me to read authors that I probably would never have gotten into. But at the same time, there is nothing like browsing a book store looking for that next great find to read. Also, my wife has said not more books for the space issue. I do continue to buy books that are part of series that are already in book format at my house but I now only buy from online. She was not happy when I found the NJO on ebay for $20 and ordered it. But that was worth every penny! Ebooks have also allowed my daughter to learn to read a bit quicker as you can find many books to help kids read easier and many for free if you take a bit of time to read. I think books will always be there as long as a market is there and the publisher and book stores can make money.

 

I prefer to read a physical book but i don't have anything against anyone who likes to read on mobile devices and at least reading in general isn't dying out which would be absurd seeing how literature has been around since ancient times.

 

I believe reading is what should not be lost, whether it involves digital media or books. My mom is able to read frequently again because you can enlaaaarge text on the ipad.

In the GFFA few people read, it's all holograms

 

I'm with you! We need to get rid of all books so that we can preserve reading. There's a beauty that scrolls have that is lost when you purchase books.

 

I begrudgingly have to deal with the fact my college switched to almost exclusively eBooks while also closing the bookstore, but not everything is an eBook, so now I have to order books through the online bookstore on occasion, and I don't like it.

 

Really? My college still seems to use real books quite often. Although, since I prefer books over ebooks, i may have just missed the other options.