Digital Literature: Is the physical version of the book going to die out?

This week’s lecture looked into Digital Literature. The lecture studied the ways in which literature and technology have developed together. The topic of Books Vs Computers was introduced so in this blog I will explore an answer to the question, Is the physical version of the book going to die out?



Annie Proulx: Books on Top: NYT 2004 says that “Nobody is going to sit down and read a novel on a twitchy little screen. Ever.” However this view in more recent times doesn’t seem to be that accurate. For example the emergence of the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader has been well received by the general public. In fact on Christmas Day Amazon.com sold more e-books than physical books. The e-books are easy to get hold of as well. You simply go onto e-book website and download e-books onto the reader. This is much quicker and easier than going into a shop or ordering a book online and waiting for it to be delivered. As Jay David Botler, Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext and the Remediation of Print says, “Electronic literary forms constitute perhaps the most important and visible avant-garde in our contemporary, and otherwise conservative, literary culture.”
This is a link to Amazon.com. This link has product information and a video on the Amazon Kindle:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0015T963C/?tag=gocous0&hvadid=4139285297&ref=pd_sl_7p2cs87ah_b



So what future does the physical book have?
Although there has been a large increase in the number of people using e-books I believe that there will always be a place for the physical versions of books. The main reason I believe that physical versions of books will never die out is because they have been around for generations, and some people simply prefer them.