TECHNOLOGY is moving fast, almost everyone owns some kind of electronic gadget and this is close to becoming a necessity.

There are not a lot of things left that haven’t become digitalised in some way. Books, magazines and newspapers, items usually in the non-digital realm, are also becoming electronic.

Chances are you are reading this online right now, instead of picking up a copy of the Post.

Australian publishers are now producing books in digital formats; eBooks. An eBook is a digital paperless version of a book you can read on your laptop, iPad, Smartphone, or eReader device, and the list can go on.

The cost of an eBook is usually half that or less than a paperback, and with some online stores you can download a chapter of the book for free to try before you buy.

An eBook download requires very little space. This means you can carry hundreds of books in your chosen device.

You can travel with just one eBook device in your luggage rather than an arm load of books, and save a lot of trees.

This all sounds like a lot of good reasons to go digital with our reading doesn’t it, and it seems reading this way is being adopted at a very fast rate.

The US company, Amazon, now sells more digital books than print books, and they have only been selling digital books for five years.

They are now readily available in Australia, and formatted for use here. Could the growing popularity of electronic books herald the demise of the humble book store, and mass market production of paperback books?

Last year a large bookshop chain in the US closed 700 stores, the impact of which was felt here in Goulburn almost costing us our local bookshop. Were eBooks their undoing?

Could paperbacks be heading the way of vinyl records and video tape (I want video tapes to come back, they don’t scratch or get used as coasters!).

I love the smell and feel of a brand new book, turning the pages and getting immersed in the story.

I thought I would not be able to get past that, but having used an eBook reader for two years now it has allowed me to get back into reading, as I can read wherever I am.

My children enjoy reading electronic books too, but I worry how this may change their ideas about books. As a child, books to me were objects of almost magical proportions, that were able to transport me to far away places and teach me about the world.

We all remember the moment the letters formed words, and we were able to read our favourite picture book for the first time, this experience I think, still needs to happen with a ‘real’ book. I guess if you enjoy reading it does not matter what format you do it in, but is digitalizing our story books a technological step too far?

EMAIL:

Follow @CandysFamily