E-book popularity on RISE

Nowadays, e-book seems to be more favorable to the reader worldwide because of its convenience, pricing, and functionality. Amazon's Kindler Book did a great job in selling e-book to the public since it was launched, but Apple iPad might take over its place and become the world most successful e-book that developed by Apple Inc. Publishers at first are strongly unhappy with the rise of the e-book as e-book might terminate their business, but soon they realized that they have to compromise with the e-book producer. If they don't do so, soon their business will comes into the end, as the worldwide reader are gradually goes into the era of the e-book, just like the music and movie industry.


Benefits of E-Book
With an iPad, user can just simply choose the book they want to buy, pay online, and then the book will automatically download to their iPad. Moreover, the price of a digital book is cheaper than an ordinary printed book. With these benefits readers will rather choose to buy an e-book instead of the ordinary book. E-book can even borrow from the library which is open 24/7 and the book that had borrowed will automatically disappear once the duration time is up. Few months later, this kind of new reading style is ready to hit the market and offer more features to every reader.

                                           Apple iPad (Source: Apple.com)

E-Book is good for us
In my opinion, I optimistically view about the rise of the e-book as it really brings benefits to the society. E-book is not only a reading device, user can use it to surf internet, play games, watch movie, listen music, view photos, shopping and etc.  Although an e-book device is expensive, but the digital book that sell online will be much cheaper compares to an ordinary book. In addition, if the readers buy a lot of digital book online, soon they can reach the break-even point, means that it is still worth it at last. We must agree that e-book nowadays is slowly implanted in our society.

                                           Amazon's Kindler (Source: Techfodder)

'Developments in technology and the internet have changed the nature of digital content and its accessibility and have opened up new opportunities for the publishing industry' (Vasileiou, Hartley & Rowley 2008). Industry of e-book provides a huge business opportunity which attracted the companies worldwide willing to invest in this field. According to BBC News (2009), 'Sony is taking steps to open up its e-book Reader and online e-book store'.


References:

• BBC News 2009, Sony to back open e-book format, Technology, BBC, viewed 15 June 2010, <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8201093.stm>
• Vasileiou, M, Hartley, R & Rowley, J 2008, 'Progressing the definition of "e-book"', Library hi Tech, Vol. 26 no. 3.