eBook: Future of Reading & Writing

Every time you come across a genuinely revolutionary technology you go through an “Aha” moment in your life. It is that magical moment that tells you that the rules have indeed changed and forever. This was probably how you felt when for the very first time you…

Clicked on your very first web hyperlink….

Found the satellite image of your house on Google Earth….

Or read your first eBook on your Kindle.

The migration of the book from paper to the digital realm is not just about changing over from ink to pixels, it is about bringing about a change in the way we read and write. Also, this has made it very simple for us to purchase books, any time we want to read. Stopping the process of reading will also become a whole lot easier. With the option of storing thousands of eBooks on a Kindle, it becomes easier to carry them wherever you go. Nevertheless we may end up losing out on a few core attributes of book reading that we are used to for so many years.

Ten millions of books have been published ever since the Gutenberg days and this is probably the most valuable source of knowledge for the mankind. The hyperlinks in these digital texts make it very easy to navigate while reading newspapers, magazines, blogs and websites. The maturation of Google Book Search Service and the breakthrough success of Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader have made it very easier to buy ebooks online at any time of the day and from any part of the world. One Google search on “buy romance, adventure and war ebooks online” will give you all the results you wanted within a few seconds of time.

So if the introduction of eBooks is going to rewrite the future, then just how is it going to happen?

By Creating a World of Ideas: The introduction of eBooks made it easier to look for ideas contained in millions of books by creating online versions of these books. You can now come up with a shadow version of the entire library of books that you have read ever since you were a child till the present day. Not just this, you can search for every word in that huge library of books. The impact that this has brought about on scholarships is incredible. This has led to newer forms of discovery that were unthinkable a few years ago.

By increasing Impulse Buying: The easy way of purchasing books has led to a whole lot of impulse buying among the readers across the world. In fact Kindle users have bought more books than what they used to buy before. You don’t have to go looking for a book store. It is right there when you need it. You can buy any book that you wish to read, however old or new it might be. If you seem to get bored of a book you can quickly switch over to another within a matter of seconds. You can look for references instantly. Yet, that total immersion in another world that we used to experience earlier is somewhere compromised in our effort to read books the way we read newspapers and magazines: a bit here and a bit there.

By Reducing your loneliness: Online availability of books has changed the way we look for books and talk about them. There is a global book club out there where readers from across the world annotate, explain and debate the true meaning of the passage. You are not alone in your reading anymore. There are many who are reading the same book as you are and you can share your feelings, thoughts and opinions with them. You can even have a direct exchange with the author, apart from interacting with strangers.

By making it possible to write for Google: Just like the new world is attracting new book readers, it is also inspiring many to write books. With the kind of information available on the internet, it has become very easy to write books. Also, writers and publishers have started thinking in terms of Search Engine Optimization while writing and publishing books. They are more concerned about how to improve the ranking of their books by including descriptive tags for individual paragraphs and naming the chapters in an innovative way.

By providing options to pay per chapter: Digital distribution of books has made it possible to offer a free sample of the book to buyers in order to entice them to buy the book. The objective of writing introduction to the book would be to lure the readers so that they will buy the whole book. In case of short stories and non-fiction books, readers will be given the option of paying per chapter just like how it is done for digital music. Modular books will come into existence which will be split into standalone chapters intelligently. With this reading books will become similar to reading articles on newspapers, magazines and blogs.

The ease that people experience to buy ebooks online and the possibility to buy romance, adventure and war ebooks online has definitely led to change in the way people read books and even write them. However, time is the only thing that will tell whether this is for the good or bad.