Two favorite quotes:
“It’s a happy message,” said André Breedt, research and development analyst at Nielsen BookScan, which tracks book sales. “People have been reading and they will keep reading, no matter what happens.”
“Books are a very cheap treat,” said Helen Fraser, managing director of Penguin Books in London. “When you are reading all this dreadful news in the paper, a lovely 500-page novel by Marian Keyes or a classic by Charles Dickens takes you right away from all that.”
What are you reading?
People will still read things. The Seattle P-I just shut down its print operations which has some journalists up in arms. People will still want interesting content. The way they want that content (online, Kindle, iPhone, in micro-segments, daily updates, novels) may change.
I believe there will always be a demand for insightful writing and words that take our breath away. Writers should be somewhat flexible about how readers want to digest said words.
Last month I bought my brother a Kindle (at his request) and it just seems so foreign to me to not have a book to carry around, He now has this piece of machinery that is cold and unknown. Nothing beats a good book. It costs more to see a movie than to buy a good paperback and the length of enjoyment is so-so much longer.
I see reading books a bit like the slow food movement in that there’s much to be savored in that preparation time.
Bree
I totally agree with the value of a good book. I have a hard time imagining preferring a chromed-out gadget to actual books especially with nonfiction because I love making notes in the margins!
But there’s also this…the jury is out on whether the Kindle will get enough mainstream adoption to be any real threat to the book.
Will people actually replace their libraries with it or use it to augment *how* they read? Or where they read? The technology could end up expanding the potential readership of what we write.
I don’t know but I would hazard a guess that that has been the impact of the iPod up until now. Fewer record stores for sure. But I bet even more music is being sold now than before the iPod. (Once the whole issue if napster and digital music rights were ironed out.)
Just the chance to buy single songs rather than whole albums inspired me to listen to new music…and buy more of it if I liked it!
I still doubt that the Kindle will be as successful as the iPod but it may end up being a very good thing for book-writing and book-loving people.
I love this conversation. Makes me want to blog about the Kindle, since I have a different take. But I agree with the savoring, Bree, and the continued demand, Gretchen!
With all the bad news on television i have begun reading books again! What a refreshing reawakening!