It’s a beautiful sunny day and you are sitting by the pool enjoying the sun rays. You’re all curled up reading…your Kindle? Yes, I said it, the Kindle and other electronic devices are taking over our printed books. The days of sitting with a paperback book have gone like the waves in the pool. It’s the 21st Century. Welcome to the online age of books!
The Kindle has been advertised using internet marketing tactics, for quite some time. It is an electronic device that allows users to read books, newspapers, magazines, and much more. It has a specialized lighting formulation so that it actually looks as though you are reading a printed book instead of a computer screen. This is much better on the reader’s eyes as it places less strain on them in correcting for lighting differences. Since the launch of the Kindle, a few other companies have come up with their own knock off versions that all seem to be flying off the shelves. Apple had to jump on the bandwagon with the emerging online age of books, so they came out with iBooks for the iTouch, iPhone, and iPad which is a similar concept. Users can download their favourite books, magazines, and newspapers and read them on the go. This is a great concept as you can carry multiple sources right on one device.
For years companies have been publishing their materials online. Many books have been reformatted as eBooks and available for viewing and downloading on the internet. There are even some books that have never been through a printing press as they are available only online. This is becoming more common practice especially with governments encouraging a “green society”.
Brenna Erlich presents an article on Mashable with regards to the 3rd edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Although the publication is still a decade away from publication, it is projected that this edition of OED will be available only online. That’s right, it will be a green publication, and there will not be a massacre of trees to print the thousands of pages each copy that the dictionary would contain.
I think that in the future we will start to see more and more books being published specifically online and/or for the Kindle and other related technologies. It is convenient, “green”, and the greatest new fad in the world of technology.