I believe, in some part of our life, we had a collection of books. What do we do when have read them. Do you keep them in a shelf or pass them on to family and friends or just put in the recycling bin.
When we talk about books, these are written initially to preserve any kind of information which we might lose after some time. Basically, we want to preserve them. Later we wrote them to disseminate knowledge.
How much do Paper Books cost?
But do you know, every year, how many books are being printed and among those many never been read other than the editor or publisher. Just in one year, approximately 2.2 Million books are being printed using millions of trees. Remember these books are published in hundreds, not in tens. When we talk about textbooks, printing numbers are even higher.
You will be surprised to learn that textbooks prices have been increased by three times as compared to 1980 prices and it has doubled since 2002. So millions of paper books are thrown in the market. In the end, many go to the recycling bin and the small portion of them stays in libraries or passed to others. Now we can imagine how much this costs to our pocket and the environment.
So an obvious question arises do we really need books? I am NOT saying NO. We do need books but not at the hefty cost to us or to environment
Digital Books
As technology transforms our lives so as our writing and reading medium. Now more and more books are published online along with their hard copy. Digitally written books have many benefits including cost, more quality but the third element which I’m interested to share with you is the new innovative publishing methods.
Digital books are very cost effective to publish and can be sold globally using the Internet. But there is a catch, you need to have a digital device to read them. Now a day, most of us have one or two of them.
Quality of Digital Books
Quality of these books is improving day by day. To engage the reader, you can transform any book by using multimedia and interactive elements like sound, animations, website links. What you include in it, depends on the contents of the book but technology is there for the author to enhance its quality for the reader.
New Possibilities of Digital Books
Now let’s look at the new possibilities in book publishing which removing all the boundaries that hard copy had restricted for a long time. You can get an audible book even read by the author. You can have all of your books in one digital device such as your tablet or laptop. On the other side, the publishing industry also has evolved too with fewer hops in the supply chain with the global readership.
Innovation Digital Books
According to the Oxford dictionary, one of the meanings of the word “book” is
“A written or printed work consisting of pages glued or sewn together along one side and bound in covers.”
Do you think this meaning is still valid?
I am going to leave you with thought to think about that digital books very much part of the present with the possibility that in the future most of the books will be digital as it is the cost effect, more quality and convenience.
References
- “Books published per country per year – Wikipedia.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_published_per_country_per_year. Accessed 28 May. 2019.
- “That Book Costs How Much? – The New York Times.” 25 Apr. 2008, https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/25/opinion/25fri4.html. Accessed 28 May. 2019.
- “Innovation in Publishing: Renew the Book | Sandler Techworks.” 24 Nov. 2017, http://www.sandlertechworks.com/2017/11/24/innovation-in-publishing-renew-the-book/. Accessed 28 May. 2019.
- Lulu: Online Self Publishing Book & eBook ….” http://www.lulu.com/. Accessed 28 May. 2019.
- “The Power of Innovation in Publishing – Publishing Perspectives.” 28 Sep. 2011, https://publishingperspectives.com/2011/09/the-power-of-innovation-in-publishing/. Accessed 28 May. 2019.
“book | Definition of book in English by Oxford Dictionaries.” https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/book. Accessed 28 May. 2019.