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July 8, 2008

eBooks: Nick Hornby's Take

Nick Hornby has, as always, a funny and insightful take on things. Here he is in his new blog on some reason why books "will prove to be more tenacious than the CD, for the following reasons..."

Some of these include the fact, "Book readers like books, whereas music fans never had much affection for CDs..." and that, "when we bought our iPods, we already owned the music to put on it; none of us own e-books, however." He also mentions that since Apple isn't designing an eBook, they aren't very cool yet.

His last point is that people just don't read as much as they listen to music:

"But – and this is the most depressing reason – the truth is that people don’t like reading books much anyway: a 2004 survey of two thousand adults found that thirty-four per cent didn’t read books at all. The music industry’s problems are many and profound, but you never see advertisements asking us to listen to more music; there are no pressure groups or government quangos attempting to ensure that we make room in our day for a little Leona Lewis. The problem is getting people to pay for music, not getting people to consume it. Can you see every teenager in Britain harassing their parents for a Kindle? Me neither."
I don't know that the reading issues are as bad as all that, but he does have a point.