Our life is now slowly becoming digital. From books to bank accounts, shopping to entertainment, everything is now very easily available online with just a click of a mouse or even on your fingertips alibi through smartphones. Shomini Sen from News18.com looks at what’s coming in April.
As we slowly turn to digital way of life, we are leaving behind a lot of things that made our growing up years significant. Of those, books and the feeling of holding a hard bound book in your hand and reading your favourite stories is one memory that is slowly fading away all thanks to the influx of e-books and e book readers in the market.
While many feel that e-books are far more practical, economical and environment friendly, there are many who still abide by the concept of reading from paperbacks. Take for instant author, filmmaker Aishwarya R Dhanush. Both she and her actor husband Dhanush are voracious readers, but she admits that she has never read anything on the Kindle. “I don’t encourage my children, who have a reading habit, to read from the Kindle. I personally have never read a book on the Kindle. Nothing can ever replace the joy one gets of holding a book.”
Aishwarya is not the only one who prefers paperbacks over e-books.
In fact, the stupendous success of literature festivals and book fairs across the country each year where hoards of people go and buy hardbound books, is a testimony of the fact that paperbacks and hardbound books are yet to go off the market.
Ratnesh Jha, the Managing Director of Cambridge University Press says, “I would say there is still time before the market completely switches to e-books. But books are here to stay. There will be a larger blend of both e-books and paperbacks, but there is still time before we go completely digital.”
Jha, whose publishing house primarily focuses on academic books, states that the response at the World Book Fair is a testimony of the fact that books are yet to lose its target audience. “Although the millennial now prefers e-books, but we get great response every year at the world book fair, which just goes to show that people still like to buy books.”
Read the full post on News18.com.