On her LiveJournal, writer Seanan McGuire makes an important point about the nature of the digital divide and how it affects paper versus e-books. People below the poverty line—which at least 15.1% of Americans are, and probably more than that since it goes by an old standard of poverty—can’t afford e-book readers, or e-books to go on them. They can afford paper books, because books are cheap.

The problem is that printed books are starting to go away due to the encroachment of e-books. Writes McGuire:

[E]very time a discussion of ebooks turns, seemingly inevitably, to "Print is dead, traditional publishing is dead, all smart authors should be bailing to the brave new electronic frontier," what I hear, however unintentionally, is "Poor people don’t deserve to read."

She draws on her own background growing up below the poverty line, with “an ocean of books” in her bedroom to keep her company. “There are still used book dealers in the Bay Area who remember me patiently paying off a tattered paperback a nickel at a time, because that was what I could afford.” She couldn’t have afforded even a “cheap” e-book reader, and many people today are in the same situation.

And how do you give e-books to low-income families? Aside from there being no such thing as a “used” discount e-book, any expensive device put into their hands on a subsidy will end up being stolen and sold.

We need paper books to endure. Every one of us, if we can log onto this site and look at this entry, is a "have" from the perspective of a kid living in an apartment with cockroaches in the walls and junkies in the unit beneath them. A lot of the time, the arguments about the coming ebook revolution forget that the "have nots" also exist, and that we need to take care of them, even if it means we can’t force our technological advancement as fast as we might want to. I need to take care of them, because I was a little girl who only grew up to be me through the narrowest of circumstances…and most of those circumstances were words on paper.

Printed books are probably not going to go away, but even if they don’t, if enough of the “haves” make the switch over to e-books, there may not be enough people still buying and selling paper books to keep the second-hand bookstores in business. What will those in poverty do then?

29 COMMENTS

  1. Good point, but I think the digital divide issue is a temporary one.

    1) Making books available without DRM matters because then readers can format shift to work with whatever device they do have.

    2) Ebook readers SHOULD continue to plummet in price. Currently, ebook readers are still at the “neat gadget” stage, just as calculators, DVD players, digital cameras, cell phones, and MP3 players once were…before the prices plummeted and they became simple commodities.

    If pricing and tech trends continue, I think it is very realistic to expect a $50 ebook reader (generic, off-brand) within a year. (It is not hard to find lesser known brand readers selling for $75-80 on many sites).

    In two years you might find generic ebook readers at $20-30, just as generic MP3 players can often be found for $20-30 (even though lots of people pay a bunch more for name-brand gear).

    The era of “disposable ebook readers” could arrive very soon…not to mention repurposing old tech (old PCs and laptops, cell phones and MP3 players with plain text readers).

    3) Lots of lower income people already have very viable devices for ebook reading: Older PCs, older Ipad Touches, simple cell phones, PSP or Nintendo DSs, and MP3 players equipped with plain txt ebook readers.

    Unencrypted ebooks in common formats (PDF, txt, rtf, html, even epub and mobi) can be run on cheap, very outdated old PCs running an old version of windows or a slim linux distro like Puppy Linux.

    Now, the name brand stores like Amazon, Apple, B&N shun these consumers because you MUST have a device of recent vintage to run the software that unlocks the DRM crippleware. But some of the more egalitarian ebook sites like Smashwords, Feedbooks, Many Books and Project Gutenburg sell or give away non-DRM books in a huge variety of formats that can be read by most of these devices.

    Very usable options are available NOW — consumers just need to be made aware of them.

    — Bill Smith
    http://www.BillSmithBooks.com

  2. I do think she has a very important point, however I think arguing that a market needs to endure is pretty much a folly in a capitalistic environment. Markets by and large only endure because they’re profitable, and will get largely chucked the wayside when they are no longer such. (Not that this is a universal, and there are always niche markets. But this certainly doesn’t help the poor.)

    Because of this, I think it’s all more important that we not let the library go away. We need a way for the poor and otherwise less well off to have access to books, to knowledge. Be it public libraries and libraries attached to schools. We need them to endure. It’s a lot more reliable to count on a public service to endure because it’s needed than it is a market.

    That being said, paper books aren’t in any danger of going away yet at all, and I doubt they will for quite some time. With any luck by the time we are looking at them fading into the distance, a cheap ereader will be truly.. cheap. Cheap enough to be affordable to most people, including those less fortunate. Or at least, cheap enough to where you can actually check one out of a library.

  3. As new technology adoption rates go up, the prices come down. That’s not to say that some people will lose access to books if paper ceases to exist, but most people will eventually have access to digital.

    Also, keep in mind that for most people labeled as poor in this country, life is NOT the typical picture of poverty that we’re used to seeing in the movies. For example, here are some facts from the Census Bureau:

    During the year 4% of the poor became temporarily homeless. Forty percent live in apartments, less than 10% in mobile homes or trailers and about 50% live in standard one-family homes. In fact, 42% own their own home.

    The vast majority are in good repair, with more living space per person than the average non-poor person in Britain, France or Sweden.

    Ninety-six percent of poor parents say their children were never hungry during the year due to an inability to afford food.

    Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning and 92% have a microwave.

    One-third of poor households have a wide-screen plasma or LCD TV, 70% have a VCR and two-thirds have satellite/cable TV, the same proportion as own at least one DVD player.

    Half of the povery households have a personal computer and one-in-seven have two or more.

    And half of those with children have a video game system like Xbox.

    Almost 75% have a car or truck and nearly a third have two.

    In closing, I think that all but the very desperate will be able to afford an ereader and the digital books to go on it. The rest have more pressing issues like food and housing.

  4. This is a much more serious issue than commentors are suggesting. There is no way that an old PC or whatever is going to be used to read books. I won’t do it on my laptop even, let alone a desktop machine. The central difference is that when buying a used paperback book you are getting the whole experience and info in that book, you don’t have to have ar reader to read a book on. Capitalism is always running into this problem. This is in large part why the New Deal involved the Rural Electrification Admin; capitalist electric companies were not interested in expensive infrastructure investment in low income areas.

    I worry that the digital divide will increase illiteracy if there are no more new paper books. And I say all this even though I sell and give away my ebooks and stories, so I’m not opposed to the idea of eliterature. I am on a low fixed income, and only read books from the library. And with libraroies becoming more like daycare and catering to the digitalized classes, I worry this venue for access to info and literature will also end up being cut off.

  5. The assumptions that McGuire makes are short-sighted, and drawing on a limited description of what it means to “live below the poverty line.” I’m not saying that she didn’t live poor, but quoting wiki descriptions of poverty and census figures doesn’t tell the whole story… and if she did live poor, she should understand that.

    There are plenty of devices capable of reading ebooks that are low-enough in cost for someone “living below the poverty line” to afford. People living in poverty use cellphones… you don’t need more than that to read an ebook. There are also full libraries (still) and internet shops popping up in shopping centers and storefronts. And making the assumption that any personally-owned device will only be stolen is… well, not every poor neighborhood is full of thieves.

    The things McGuire laments… libraries losing funding, school budgets being slashed, etc… are problems that will affect more than just the people below the poverty line. “Poor kids are getting poorer” …guess what? Everyone’s getting poorer. However, ebooks can be provided at an ultimately lower cost than printed books, even used ones; reading devices, once bought, don’t continue to ring up charges, and they can even be borrowed; and lest we forget, it will be easier to hold onto all of those books.

    McGuire has a reason to be concerned for the welfare of poor people. However, getting access to ebooks is among the least of their problems.

  6. This is a very good point I never even considered. This issue could very well make the illiteracy rate even worse. I live in Northern New Mexico where illiteracy rate 1 being the lowest is at 20%.

    Individuals at level 1, for example, have difficulty locating simple information in a news article or applying basic math to determine the total on a sales receipt.

    I can see how eBooks could affect this number even more unfortunately. Thanks for the thoughts on this.

  7. Unfortunately, this sounds more like an issue in search of a problem than a problem itself. A while back, I lived in a heavily Jewish neighborhood in Seattle. A librarian there told me that the neighborhood had the highest checkout rate in the city. The library was always busy and at any one time two-thirds of its books were checked out.

    Not long after that, I spent the summer in a heavily black Washington, D.C. neighborhood. Despite the fact that the library offered a wonderful respite from the heat and humidity, sometimes I was the only person there besides the staff. Even more depressing, the shelves were bulging with unchecked-out books. There was clearly no unfulfilled demand for reading material.

    A black woman I met that summer explained to me that, in her efforts to interest black children in Shakespeare, she talked to them about the sex in his tales. I was tempted to suggest to her that, if that was only way to get their interest, these kids were in very bad shape. No interest in adventure or travel? Sad. No desire to wrestle with questions deeper than sex? Even worse. Shakespeare’s “To be or not to be” was not a question these kids were asking. All they wanted to know, according to her, was how to get laid.

    Seanan is no doubt very interested in reading herself, but she’s wrong to project that interest on a large segment of the nation’s poor. Harper Lee is far closer to the truth in To Kill a Mockingbird when she describes the South’s rural poor white kids as uninterested in imaginative stories. The same is true of today’s poor black kids in our inner cities. It’s not the opportunity that’s lacking. It’s the desire.

    The problem in both cases doesn’t lie in the supply of something to read. It lies in a blighted home life. For Lee’s poor, it was the unrelenting farm labor expected of poor children from almost the first moment they could walk. For inner city children today it lies in fatherless homes, high crime rates, drugs, violence, and a welfare system that destroys initiative. And in both cases, it lies in parents who don’t value reading themselves.

    And I might add that, a century and more ago, Jews arriving from Eastern Europe were among the poorest of the poor. While Austrians, Germans and others arrived here with enough money to purchase a farm in agricultural states in the Midwest, many Jews stepped off boats with little other than the clothes on their backs. Unable to move beyond NYC, they worked in the city’s sweatshops and became street vendors.

    Yet in a single generation those Jews exploded out of poverty and began to flood the nation’s universities, becoming doctors, lawyers and financiers. They did it because their faith had taught them to value literacy, because their families stayed intact, and because their own Jewish-run assistance organizations insisted that they not stay dependent. They were a poor people with a rich culture.

    None of those characteristics are true of many of today’s poor. They live in a culture that lacks any of the characteristics that lead to success, one that’d rather whine and play the victim, complaining about what they don’t have (here ebook readers), than to take action to better their lot.

    And no, this isn’t ‘blaming the victim.’ This is blaming people for seeing themselves almost exclusively as victims. When you see yourself as the victim of what others do, you no longer control your future. And those who do that have already lost the battle.

  8. The cheap ebook reader will soon be cheap enough that most households on welfare will be able to afford them. They’re cheaper than televisions, and most of the poor have televisions, mp3 players, and cell phones. When you can’t afford a big house, you go in for more portable possessions.

    Secondly, Project Gutenberg ebooks are free as in beer and free of DRM. Thus poor kids will be exposed to Great Literature while their rich peers are reading about sparkling vampires. It remains to create cultural aspirations in the young skulls full of mush.

    Yeah, i’m fantasizing, but a man has to have dreams.

  9. If we’re considering the cheap ereaders to not be cheap enough for the poor, I’m pretty sure computers and smartphones aren’t helping either. Especially when we’re talking about children as well. Regardless of the affordability of the device though, the simple fact is that there’s no used book market when it comes to digital media because you rarely end up owning the book itself. You can’t turn around and sell it to a used book store or donate it to charity. This does make the cost of books themselves ultimately far higher when you can’t go to a used book store for a vastly cheaper copy of a book. After all, even if you have an affordable way of reading the books, the price of the books themselves could still put them out of reach.

    Though I still maintain that we’re not looking at ebook adoption going that high, or paper books going away any time even remotely soon still.

  10. The most important point she makes is that a secondary market exists in paper books but authors and publishers are working diligently to eliminate any kind of secondary market in ebooks.

    As a kid I remember prowling used book stores where old paperbacks sold for half of the original cover price. Some old yellowed dog-eared novel with a cover price of 50 cents would cost me a quarter. And, when finished, I could sell it back for store credit. I could read on the cheap!

    There’s no technical reason why we can’t re-sell ebooks. Amazon, for instance, could easily transfer the license to another user at our request. But publishers can only think about maximizing profits by restricting user rights and maintaining high prices. These trends do indeed work against the poor more than the well-off.

  11. If the cost of the ereader becomes affordable, there is already a source of free books–the library. My public library has quite a good source of ebooks. There is generally a waiting list for best sellers, but I have plenty to read.

    Publishers Simon & Schuster and Macmillan won’t sell ebooks to libraries. So the biggest worry about the digital divide is that other publishers will join them.

  12. While used ebooks are never going to happen used ebookreaders are another story. So getting the necessary equipment should be fairly easy even for the very poor. Access to books though…

    In the past a lot of heavy readers did not pay authors to read their works. They swapped copies, bought books for a penny at used bookstores, went to libraries etc. These options will either be curtailed or disappear entirely, at least in theory.

    In practise of course anybody – poor or not – will be able to acquire what they want via piracy. In what used to be called the Third World the acquisition of digital goods via piracy is anyway pretty much getting entrenched.

  13. When I entered high school, a similar argument was made about hand held calculators in the classroom. A few years later, this was no longer a concern–prices had dropped.

    If pBooks disappeared tomorrow and the technology and pricing of today held sway, this would indeed be an issue. But that is not likely to happen. I imagine that in the not too distant future, many people will come to believe that it is cheaper to buy a book reader than to pay the bus fare or for the gas needed to go to the library. Our library has readers one can borrow like books, btw.

  14. There seems to be general agreement that ebook readers will be available cheaply in the near future.

    Aside from “piracy,” for free books there’s Gutenburg, freebies on Baen, Smashwords, Feedbooks, Manybooks, Wattpad, Scribd, maybe Amazon, B&N, Kobo if they ever open up and get away from DRM.

    Smart authors will make some of their works as freebie downloads to create their future readers.

  15. I agree with Mr Jordan’s points so I’ll not rehash them, but his final point bears some expanding. The poor have bigger problems than access to ebook readers.

    For starters, all poor people are not the same; the rural poor lead very different lives and face very different issues than the urban poor that most people seem to visualize when talk of “the poor” comes up. The problems of the rural poor aren’t simply problems of limited finances, but rather limited *access* to resources. The rural poor aren’t concentrated in inner city “projects”; free clinics, public libraries, internet cafes, aren’t a few blocks away, they’re miles and miles away, if available at all. Pbooks, new or used, are *not* a cheap or readily available option at any price. In fact, I wonder if Ms McGuire has priced used pbooks recently. Even before ebooks became an option, used paperback prices had risen to levels that give pause even to middle class readers.

    Second, to be brutaly honest, a big portion of the poor, urban and rural, don’t read. It is in fact one of the reasons they are poor. And I’m not talking just outright illiteracy or the functional illiteracy created by social promotion in the school systems. I’m also talking people who *can* read but see no value in it. Reading isn’t just a skill, it is also a culture unto itself. It is handed down, generation to generation, as a family custom… or it isn’t. Ingraining it into a line that doesn’t carry it is a non-trivial effort which is why basic literacy is such an ongoing challenge.

    Third, as pointed out, the divide between the poor (especially the urban and suburban poor) and the middle class in the US is not as broad as many would think. (Hence the impact of the ongoing recession on the latter.) One needs to be careful not to overstate the “affluence” of the american poor, but with the official definition of poverty set at an income of $16,000 and with the broad array of government and *non-government* assistance efforts, the smart and resourceful poor can mitigate many of the challenges they face. Its not fun and it can be dispiriting for many but they find ways, as the above-quoted census stats point out. What the stats don’t say though, is that car ownership for the poor means a constant struggle to keep an 8 year old pickup truck running instead of leasing a new Prius every 3 years; flat panel ownership means a 24in Viore or Dynax instead of a 60 in Sharp Quattron or Samsung. The PC might be a $300 netbook instead of a $1000 Macbook. Getting the kid an Xbox means saving for 3-6 months to buy the low-end xmas bundle and actually playing the year-old pack-in games instead of getting the high-end Kinect bundle and pre-ordering all the hot games as they’re announced.

    The “digital divide” has been oversold going back to the last century.
    Is it a concern? Sure. But it is hardly a *critical* concern. Not today.
    Being poor is about not having enough. Not having enough education, enough healthy food, enough parenting, enough security. Those are the basics. Those are the first-order needs. Those are the things that separate the poor from the rest of society.

    ebook readers?
    For adults, a non-issue. Honest. Recreational reading is not a life changer for poor adults.

    For kids, ebook readers (and the public domain alone) can be a godsend. But only if they know how to read and have been taught to value literacy and the worlds it opens to you. That is a prerequisite that needs addressing first. And we live in a time that parents actually have to fight the local school bureaucracy to keep them from promoting their underperforming, mis-educated kids.

    As far as assisting the poor goes, ebook readers are just a second-order literacy tool; worrying about it before dealing with the basics achieves little.

  16. As a clarifier for those who think you can give away or sell an ebook without DRM.

    A used paper book can be resold or whatever because of “The First Sale Doctrine” which says that you are reselling the paper and ink, not the contents.

    Since an ebook is only content, you can’t resell it or give it away.

    For the specifics on this as well as links to all the legal documents and laws, go to my blog and click on the “copyright” label.

    http://mbyerly.blogspot.com/

  17. Wow. The privilege exhibited in so many of these comments. Does not give a warm fuzzy.

    “Let them eat cake!”

    Hopefully, the OLPC’s planned XO-3 sub $100 tablet will trickle down/over to the poor masses in First World countries and “solve” the hardware part of this equation.

  18. Andy – I agree whole heartedly. Anyway the paper eBook issue is not relevant to the poor yet. It is way too early in the transition process. by the time it becomes important there will be a string of cheap eReaders on the market.
    And as far as the selling on of eBooks goes I don’t intend to light another fire under that nonsense.

  19. Gus:
    “These options will either be curtailed or disappear entirely, at least in theory.”

    “In practise of course . . . ”

    Gus these practices are already rampant, absolutely rampant. The arrogance of some publishers who are deluded enough to think that they can simply change to licensing, while increasing their profit margins, and the ordinary person in the street will say ‘oh… ok then’, is stunning. The arrogance and hubris that some publishers express as they lecture readers about copyright law, after manipulating it in the most cynical and grasping way, is also quite stunning.

    The future landscape of the ‘real world’ is clear to anyone willing to open their eyes. Technology has liberated the reader and s/he will apply common sense to the eBook market in the same way they did with music. The publishers will eventually wake up and accept that the public, once so liberated, will do whatever they feel is right, irrespective of any bleating chastisement.

    This may seem like a ghastly vista to some people who live in their ivory towers – but it is simply how it is, and how it will be, and the sooner they get used to it and adapt their business model, the better it will be for them.

    I believe in the rule of law and hate to see it broken. But I also believe in justice and fairness, and sometimes they conflict when bad law is made and the masses can see through it like the emperor’s clothes.

    Bad law brings all law into disrepute and undermines the law as a whole. This is a disastrous situation with knock on effects no one can predict. But that is what happens when law is made by special interests, who act in their own self interest and with the compliance of easily influences politicians, and not in the interest of the people.

  20. Wow, a lot of reaction to this topic. I agree with those who argue that this isn’t a problem. While there are a lot of poor people, most of them have phones. We need to remember that eBooks are not limited to expensive reading devices like an iPad. Not only are dedicated readers getting cheaper (I’ve seen some generic brands at well under a hundred bucks at Big Lots), low-end laptops can be picked up for almost nothing and some of us continue to support eReader so you can grab an ancient Palm for a couple of bucks at a garage sale and read.

    A bigger problem… let’s see what we can do to reduce poverty rather than assume poverty levels will continue to rise and that we’ve got to somehow accomodate them.

  21. I agree with Mr Jordan’s points so I’ll not rehash them, but his final point bears some expanding. The poor have bigger problems than access to ebook readers.

    For starters, all poor people are not the same; the rural poor lead very different lives and face very different issues than the urban poor that most people seem to visualize when talk of “the poor” comes up. The problems of the rural poor aren’t simply problems of limited finances, but rather limited *access* to resources. The rural poor aren’t concentrated in inner city “projects”; free clinics, public libraries, internet cafes, aren’t a few blocks away, they’re miles and miles away, if available at all. Pbooks, new or used, are *not* a cheap or readily available option at any price. In fact, I wonder if Ms McGuire has priced used pbooks recently. Even before ebooks became an option, used paperback prices had risen to levels that give pause even to middle class readers.

    Second, to be brutaly honest, a big portion of the poor, urban and rural, don’t read. It is in fact one of the reasons they are poor. And I’m not talking just outright illiteracy or the functional illiteracy created by social promotion in the school systems. I’m also talking people who *can* read but see no value in it. Reading isn’t just a skill, it is also a culture unto itself. It is handed down, generation to generation, as a family custom… or it isn’t. Ingraining it into a line that doesn’t carry it is a non-trivial effort which is why basic literacy is such an ongoing challenge.

    Third, as pointed out, the divide between the poor (especially the urban and suburban poor) and the middle class in the US is not as broad as many would think. (Hence the impact of the ongoing recession on the latter.) One needs to be careful not to overstate the “affluence” of the american poor, but with the official definition of poverty set at an income of $16,000 and with the broad array of government and *non-government* assistance efforts, the smart and resourceful poor can mitigate many of the challenges they face. Its not fun and it can be dispiriting for many but they find ways, as the above-quoted census stats point out. What the stats don’t say though, is that car ownership for the poor means a constant struggle to keep an 8 year old pickup truck running instead of leasing a new Prius every 3 years; flat panel ownership means a 24in Viore or Dynax instead of a 60 in Sharp Quattron or Samsung. The PC might be a $300 netbook instead of a $1000 Macbook. Getting the kid an Xbox means saving for 3-6 months to buy the low-end xmas bundle and actually playing the year-old pack-in games instead of getting the high-end Kinect bundle and pre-ordering all the hot games as they’re announced.

    The “digital divide” has been oversold going back to the last century.
    Is it a concern? Sure. But it is hardly a *critical* concern. Not today.
    Being poor is about not having enough. Not having enough education, enough healthy food, enough parenting, enough security. Those are the basics. Those are the first-order needs. Those are the things that separate the poor from the rest of society.

    ebook readers?
    For adults, a non-issue. Honest. Recreational reading is not a life changer for adults.

    For kids, ebook readers (and the public domain alone) can be a godsend. But only if they know how to read and have been taught to value literacy and the worlds it opens to you. That is a prerequisite that needs addressing first. And we live in a time that parents actually have to fight the local school bureaucracy to keep them from promoting their underperforming, mis-educated kids.

    As far as assisting the poor goes, ebook readers are just a second-order literacy tool; worrying about it before dealing with the basics achieves little.

  22. Just to be clear, I am not making the argument that DRM-free = being able to resell or give away books.

    I just believe that DRM-free is essential to enabling readers to use generic, cheap ereaders which undercut the cost of the Nook, Kindle, IPad, etc. I refuse to buy DRMed ebooks, plain and simple.

    Plus, DRM is fundamentally useless since you can still get screenshoots of each page or take photos of a printed book and collect them as jpg-books. Clunky to the point of not worth doing, but still possible and easy for the most noob of noobs, if time-consuming.

  23. Her article strikes me as deeply dishonest…the poor used as prop for her publishing preference. Meanwhile, the Kindle, more than any other device I can think of, bridges the “digital divide” because it offers free internet through 3g connection for the life of the device. The poor avail themselves of music and information through various devices (tv, radio, cd players), and the cost of ereader devices are certainly in line with these other devices.
    And libraries and used books aren’t going away even if future books are never published in paper. Look at the used record stores 30 years after the demise of the LP. You can still buy newly minted vinyl, if you care to do so.
    If there is a literacy problem among the poor, it’s not due to lack of caring or lack of books. All children go to school, are taught to read, and have many opportunities to read books for free. That some don’t read can be attributed to many causes, but not for lack of a used book market. That’s just silly.

  24. I’ve thought some about this. Have reached no solid conclusions — as with everything we’ll have to see how it plays out. But.

    I suspect that e-readers may just seem expensive, because they are an electronic device. In fact, compare the cost of a device with the cost of enough bookcases with the same storage capacity. Furniture is expensive. Ok, many families can get bricks & boards for free. Now how big does their dwelling need to be in order to house the same number of books, and how much does that increase the cost of rent. As reader devices become more and more common, more and more devices may well end up being passed on as donations as the ‘Have’s’ upgrade to the newest models.

    What presently accounts for much of the divide, is not entirely attributable to the cost of equipment. It’s at least partially a gap in infrastructure. The biggest problem for enabling the purchase of current publications, is that one generally needs a credit card. There’s also a knowledge substructure. But both of those causes of the divide seem to be diminishing at least somewhat. I commute via public transportation with many members of a diverse ‘underclass’ — the working, and non-working poor. When I first started riding, I was asked so many questions about my e-reader that I could barely get any reading done. One gentleman was interested in his wife’s behalf, stating that she was a voracious reader who mainly reads scripture. When I told him about the large number of free or extremely inexpensive verisons of the Bible that were available for the device, I could see him begin to run the numbers in his mind. My fellow riders all have cellphones, I hear them converse sometimes; lots of them have fancy televisions and gaming systems. They can figure out the tech, and they have knowledgeable friends to help them troubleshoot.

    Anecdotally, the people I see struggling the most, and in some cases being passed clean by technological change, are those who refused for the better part of two decades to believe that computers would ever take off, and managed to ignore them when they did. Many of them found a huge source of pride and and a sense of achievement in the fact that they could type the same address over and over and over with no errors, and many of this group are still in our world and workforce. As Katherine says above, printed books will remain abundant for some time to come. I’d predict that this segment is the least likely to adopt e-books.

    I don’t happen to believe that “the medium is the message,” as clever and catch-wordy as the statement is (sorry Zombie Marshall McLuhan). The message is the message, and it will remain available, because like printed books, libraries will continue to exist, and will continue to lend in all available formats. The bigger issue for authors and publishers likely remains a priori instilling in people a love of reading, and the continued promotion of literacy — reading as a habit of mind. Without those two things, the rest is moot.

  25. Our family is “astride that divide.” In 2003, OUR decline commenced from Six-Figures, attributed to … reasons not relevant to this discussion. We DOWNLOADED “Kindle Apps” to two PC’s (not “readers”), juggle the food and fuel cash, and use self-purchased bank gift-cards at Amazon. We remain optimistic that our bodies, minds, will and work will save us.

  26. I worry more about the rich. They have no option when it comes to ebooks but to pay almost nothing. I once spent $44 for a single ebook, but that is unusual and still pocket change for the richer book buyer. And went you pile on all the free ebooks there is literally no allure.

    Rare print books are another story and can reach hundreds of thousands of dollars each. Many wealthy folks have huge collections. And there is also a fine book publishing industry not to mention expensive print editions of all kinds. The ebook attraction for the rich becomes even worse as devices get cheaper. There the only option is addictive purchase of each newer model. That is a loser too as the older devices are just discarded.

    So don’t worry about the impoverished; ereading is verging on free.

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