Posted on 07/22/2011 7:35:46 AM PDT by markomalley
I believe so, mostly because of the coffee shop atmosphere of the place. Previously, you’d only see those sort of people working in the eclectic bookstores that specialized in used, rare or out-of-print selection. Borders became the primary crossover to the main-line retailers.
LOL
Really old-fashioned is wanting to go to a neighborhood book store where the owner behind the counter knows every book on the shelves, and every employee can suggest books based on what you've read and enjoyed. The Barnes & Borders stores did a nice job of creating a pleasant atmosphere, but it's not the same.
The big-box stores killed most of those mom-and-pop shops, who couldn't compete with their massive selection and economies of scale; the big boxes were in turn killed by online sellers who take selection and scale to another order of magnitude. The irony is that the fall of the big boxes opens the door for the independent shops to make a comeback as a place to browse and talk about books.
Amen. When I'm done I donate them to the senior center.
Love my Kindle, but I still buy books for the kids.
I’d buy more books for the Kindle, but the price break isn’t enough. I’m saving them printing and logistics costs and the digital book is slightly cheaper and sometime even more expensive.
As it is, I pull classic works of all genres from Project Guterberg.
I want paper books. No electricity needed.
Me. I buy books to read them. The experience of reading them is pretty irrelevant. But if you're asking what the attraction is to the e-reader, it's pretty plain:
(1) it is convenient. I can buy a book in about ten seconds through Amazon.
(2) It is cheaper than buying regular books. In addition to the something like ten thousand or so free volumes on Amazon, most of the e-books are priced much cheaper than their paper counterparts.
(3) I can hold thousands of books in one device. Why do I want to buy, store, and carry heavy and cumbersome paper books when I can download them digitally and carry my entire library in a Kindle or an iPad?
(4) I find the experience to be better with an e-reader. On the Kindle iPad app--I don't know about the others--I can bookmark pages or passages to which I would like to return or in which I am interested, or, if I come across a word with which I am unfamiliar, I can simply put my finger over the word and the e-reader will provide me with a definition. Pretty remarkable.
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