E-publishing - A Goodbye to Paper?

While reading the chapters from Thompson's Books in the Digital Age I was somewhat sceptical of the development of e-books. Reading from a book that was quite obviously filled with 468 pages of lovely genuine paper, I couldn't help but feel a little wary of the idea that the way of the future lay in e-books. A future without books? Madness I tell you! Why would anyone want to live in a world where bookshops become obsolete, publishing agencies close down and that book you wanted for Christmas becomes nothing more than a URL address? I'm being completely nonsensical of course, because book shops will not become obsolete just as many other shops have not been deemed unnecessary by the phenomenon of the internet.

E-publishing, rather than spelling the demise of the book, could perhaps be looked upon as its development. No one could deny the huge impact that technology and the internet has had on the publishing world. Such technology has in fact revolutionised the publishing industry as books and journals are readily available online. At the click of a mouse, one can access the works of Jane Austen or Charles Dickens. Also, online journals have had a huge impact on academia with more and more articles becoming available online.

The development of e-publishing has also generated a greater longevity for slow-sellers, with electronic storage providing unlimited archiving. E-publishing has also brought down the production costs of books and made many publications more accessible on a global scale.

Of course many people, myself included, still prefer reading a book from print, the physical product there in front of you, and I'm not sure if this will ever change some time soon. Further to this, there are certain issues that need to be dealt with. Piracy for example is a problem that becomes more difficult to resolve under e-publishing. Also, the selling of paper books is still outnumbering its electronic counterpart but these are issues that take time to resolve.

E-publishing is still in its infancy and while it may take a while before it establishes itself as a solid and stable industry, there is no doubting that it has revolutionised the world of publishing.