It seems that our brain make connections when reading the books with other sensorial aspects, like touching a piece of paper, or remembering the location of an specific phrase in the book, etc.
Just remember a classical paper book you have recently read. Is there a remarkable sentence you remember from this book? Could you remember where it was located in the book? At the end, or at the beginning? Or on the top right corner? Sometimes we connect these memories with the spatial location on the book. And… what about an electronic book? In Kindle, since you can change the size of font, any particular sentence can be anywhere, any time you read it. So it is difficult to make “that connection” in your brain between a particular idea from the book and the location in it. Or any one of you can remember the location of a great idea from an electronic book you have read? In a classical paper book it is easy to remember even the page number, like for example page 120, but in a Kindle it is like remembering location 62342! It is quiet hard, right?
I have found people that hate to read books in an electronic device (e-books): But I have also found people that once they have read a few e-books, and they are familiar with the advantages, they consider it as the best option for reading books.
I have also found that Kindle Kids books, that have nice full page illustrations, with some level of interactivity, really attract the young community of readers. Some kids, for good of for bad, expect to conduct some active interaction with the book, and sometimes they find the paper book somehow bored. They love to touch the screen and find a secret message, or hear a sound, etc.
Will the paper books disappear in the future? I do not think so, but you can be sure they will be considered less ecological and unpractical, and of course less common. Print on demand books is a great option to be more ecological, because of less waste of damaged or not sold books. E-books will continue its evolution and maybe we should evolve along with them.
Rhal Zahi
Santuarios.com publisher, illustrator and Writer
,
