If dead-tree books die, what will the poor read?

http://seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com/390067.html

by ColinWright • 15 years ago

6 12 15 years ago

seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com

wccrawford3• 15 years ago

Trying to solve a problem that isn't a problem yet. By the time it is a problem, maybe ebook readers will be the cost of books et voila! No problem.

I'm seriously not worried about this, even if only for the fact that there are billions of print books and we're not burning them. They're just sitting there, waiting to be read.

jinushaun• 15 years ago

Ebooks will drop in price. No problem. If the poor can afford $150 Nike shoes, they can afford an ebook.

The real problem is preservation of information. Dead-tree books can't be destroyed by magnets and EM radiation. One thousand years from now, can people still read our documents? With dead-tree books, they can.

BSeward2• 15 years ago

If disadvantaged homes can't afford ebook readers they will read on computers. They will go to the library and get online there and read millions, billions of free things on line, far, far in excess of what is available in a city's second-hand stores. Much is dreck, sure, but those who really hunger for knowledge can find it beyond what a room full of books can offer.

The selection can't be quite as grand as what will be available to people able to pay for ebooks, but the same is true of the author of this piece and being limited to second-hand, very affordable books.

Hyena5• 15 years ago

Because libraries are absolutely brimming with computers. In Los Angeles, the libraries tend to have a clutch of general computers, a significant fraction occupied by the homeless (that's what I'd, can't fault them).

BSeward2• 15 years ago

Well, sure, because they're full of books. But if libraries plan to survive in a future without books then they'll be full of computers.

Hyena5• 15 years ago

They will borrow ebooks from the library on free readers. The cost of readers is likely to fall far enough, and their use be ubiquitous enough (think: schools), that providing readers will be a fairly low cost gap-filling operation. It might even be cheaper than the public libraries themselves.

wccrawford3• 15 years ago

Because libraries are absolutely brimming with ebook readers.

Yes, this is a copy of your comment to someone else, but yours instead. You looked to the future for yours, but not theirs.

Hyena5• 15 years ago

I'll acknowledge that I was quick and snide. However, I do not think the future of libraries is to become banks of computers.

That would make little sense considering that the alternative would be cheaper and provide better service.

ryandvm• 15 years ago

Actually, near zero distribution costs will ensure that in the long term, the poor are going to have access to far more literature then ever before.

If dead-tree books die, what will the poor read?

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