Well, the truth is that the thing is not about liking or not liking them.
What I do like is to read. And I don’t care about format. It canbe a book, a newspaper, a magazine, the screen of a computer, the one of a smartphone, of an electronic book or any other format anyone can imagine. And I do not mind using different formats along the day because, I insist, what I like is to read.
My father likes to read. He can read two or three books at the same time, many a week, he is a compulsive reader. Last Friday we gave him his birthday present: a Kindle DX. In just one day he read one and a half books.
Wall Street Journal recently published that those who have e-book readers read more than those who don’t have these devices, and this seems to make perfect sense. It makes sense that, in this case, early adopters are not the most tech savvy but those who read more, which would invalidate a hypothetical hasty conclusion that “the e-book makes people read more” in favor of the more logical of “those who spend the most money on books are the first to use these new devices”.
If this is so, and the data published in the WSJ lead at least to consider it, publishers (and writers) should be in a hurry to meet the demand that is coming to them from of their best customers. High informed customers who will not believe that printing, storage, transportation, distribution, … are a small part of the price of the book. Customers who some times choose an expensive hardcover edition, and others choose a cheaper one by criteria that they only know: price, author, subject, desire to keep and re-read, … Customers who are soon starting to ask why if they spend 20 Euros in a “printed-in-paper” book they can not directly access their digital version to read it in the device they want.
I am very sure that my father is going to buy books printed in paper, but also that he is going to use his Kindle a lot. Just as he uses (very much) his iPod.
