Or perhaps I should say a Renaissance.
E-books. We all know their sales are going up in leaps and bounds while physical book sales are dropping. Is this surprising? Well I don’t think so. But let me explain my POV *grin*
I LOVE books. The smell of a new book, the lovely smoothness of a new cover, how pretty it looks on my bookshelf (and like most avid readers, always need more bookshelves ; p) the only downside to my love of books is their price.
At $40 a pop for a new book it really is a BIG luxury for me. So when the e-readers are under $100 and it means I could buy, like, 5 new stories for $15, well that makes me pretty ecstatic. Especially because I can fit HUNDREDS of books onto that tinsy, tiny e-reader.
Instead of living in fear of being crushed by my numerous weighty bookcases in an earthquake *lol*


The other thing I love about the whole e-book movement?
I love that no one can dictate my choices. Just because vampires are huge right now (and a shout out to Amanda Hocking with her fantastic selling ‘My Blood Approves’ series) doesn’t mean we ALL want to read them. I love a huge variety of books that, truth be told, my local bookstores just can’t offer. But on-line where self-publishing is beginning to explode I can find literally (*lol*) ANY KIND OF BOOK! All those fantastic stories turned down by publishers and agents because ‘they aren’t currently in vogue’ are now starting to pop up on Amazon and Smashwords and I suddenly have hundreds of options!

And I love it. I can get my rom-com fill from a fantastic writer such as Talli and her book The Hating Game. I can have all the dark romance I desire from authors such as Amanda.
Joe Konrath and others provide some awesome action/detective stories.
There is SO MUCH available to me at my fingertips at a price that makes reading no longer an absolute luxury.
Finally we, as the readers, are the ones who get to say ‘this book rocks!’ rather than a publisher jamming several titles under our noses and telling us they’re the best out there.
Because do you know what? I don’t believe it. Not for a minute! There are thousands of stories being completed as I write this and a goodly portion of them will be fantastic, entertaining reads that sweep us away. And anything that encourages reading (in my POV) is a very good thing.

And I can just imagine that Varsity students are hanging out for the day that all those monster (in price and size) textbooks are on easy to read (and slip in your pocket) e-readers.

I’m never going to throw my beautiful books away, but I can see that in the future having a personal physical library might be something of a novelty.