Is this the end of books as we know them?

In today’s world there are many ways to “read” a book without even touching it, starting with the oldest way of adapting good books to mostly average movies with a comment “why to read something for 3, 5, 7 days if I can see a movie in two hours?”. Besides that, it’s been some time now since we have audio books which, in a combination with an I-pod or some other mp3 player, allow us to listen to a literary narrative read by an educated voice with the finest accent or by some barely known actor while we are waiting for a bus, driving a car or flying. Some would agree that it is a perfect saving of time that we usually waste looking through the window or thinking about unimportant stuff. Finally, there is Kindle. Electronic book reader that removes “flaws” of regular books, like misprints, small font size, heaviness, damaged pages and many other, and permits carrying a good portion of our libraries with us. Maybe for some people it is a step forward literacy wise, but I personally think that those “flaws” are the things that make books so interesting. It is as good a feeling to open a brand new book and sense the smell of the ink just as much it is to hold in hands a work printed more than fifty years ago knowing that numerous people have read it before you and maybe even influenced its readers. Highlighting tells us about a part that some anonymous reader liked, coffee and food stains tell us how contagious the work is and how the former owner couldn’t separate from the book until he finishes it.

Books influence their owners in many different ways. Let’s imagine that there are only electronic ways of reading or listening to a book. If a child in India would find a Kindle or an I-pod he would probably sell it for some money as fast as he could. But finding a book that he could read would certainly have greater chances to influence his development. Also, if all the books were in electronic format it would be easier to find and destroy “inappropriate” work once and for all. A skillfully placed virus or a manufacturer’s decision not to distribute the book through Kindle would effectively suffocate its existence.

My opinion is that technological development can only contribute to the promotion of a book. Amazon as the manufacturer of Kindle has increased the ways of exchanging and buying cheap books which was, before that, reserved for citizens of big cities and now it is available to anyone. We can see an example in a hard cover book that costs 90$ and its Kindle edition that costs only 9$.

Of course that many people will follow the way of technological novelties and read the books on their computer screens, but in the end, that leaves us with a question how to take an autograph of an author whose book you have on Kindle, and how to store a collection of electronic titles in your apartment?