Students wary of e-books
Lucia Allen
Issue date: 4/14/08 Section: News
Electronic book devices have been available to the public for years, but improved versions, like Amazon's Kindle and Sony's Reader Digital Book, remain unpopular among Northeastern students and faculty.
English professor Gary Goshgarian said e-books are merely a gimmick and hopes they will not replace paper books.
"I'm an old-fashioned kind of person, so perhaps it's a generational thing," he said. "I would not be interested in paying $400 to hold an electronic memory of books."
English professor Francis Blessington heard about the devices as early as 10 years ago, and after being told it was "the new coming thing," he said he wondered why it still hasn't caught on.
"There has always been other ways of presenting [literature]," Blessington said. "You had the oral, because there was no other way of representing the spoken word; the Chinese had screens where people had to walk along to read. It depends on what people get used to and what will cause the revolution."
In 1998, CNN suggested in an article that people will continue to use paper books for decades due to their resolution, portability and disposable qualities. However, the article said e-books would eventually dominate.
Recent data suggests this is coming true: e-book sales topped at $33 million in 2007, according to the International Digital Publishing Forum, which tracks the sales of such items.
Yaewon Kim, a sophomore biochemistry major, said the e-book would be sufficient for books that are large and hard to carry around, like the Harry Potter series.
"It's kind of useless other than that. I like reading something tangible, collecting my books on a shelf and folding corners to save places I want to come back to in a book," Kim said.
However, this growth may not be enough to save e-books. By 2003, a number of big name sellers in the literary industry - like Barnes and Noble - had stopped selling e-books because of dismal sales and Gemstar stopped selling its Softbook e-book devices and e-book content that same year.
English professor Gary Goshgarian said e-books are merely a gimmick and hopes they will not replace paper books.
"I'm an old-fashioned kind of person, so perhaps it's a generational thing," he said. "I would not be interested in paying $400 to hold an electronic memory of books."
English professor Francis Blessington heard about the devices as early as 10 years ago, and after being told it was "the new coming thing," he said he wondered why it still hasn't caught on.
"There has always been other ways of presenting [literature]," Blessington said. "You had the oral, because there was no other way of representing the spoken word; the Chinese had screens where people had to walk along to read. It depends on what people get used to and what will cause the revolution."
In 1998, CNN suggested in an article that people will continue to use paper books for decades due to their resolution, portability and disposable qualities. However, the article said e-books would eventually dominate.
Recent data suggests this is coming true: e-book sales topped at $33 million in 2007, according to the International Digital Publishing Forum, which tracks the sales of such items.
Yaewon Kim, a sophomore biochemistry major, said the e-book would be sufficient for books that are large and hard to carry around, like the Harry Potter series.
"It's kind of useless other than that. I like reading something tangible, collecting my books on a shelf and folding corners to save places I want to come back to in a book," Kim said.
However, this growth may not be enough to save e-books. By 2003, a number of big name sellers in the literary industry - like Barnes and Noble - had stopped selling e-books because of dismal sales and Gemstar stopped selling its Softbook e-book devices and e-book content that same year.