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Do E-Books really have a place in the future of reading?

According to a USA today article, the numbers tell the story…

• Random House, the USA’s largest publisher, says more than 20% of U.S. revenue in the first half of this year was from digital sales.

• Amazon recently announced that two more authors, Kathryn Stockett and Janet Evanovich, have reached the million mark in Kindle e-book sales.

• Eight of the top 20 titles on USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books list this week are e-books.

• Barnes & Noble’s strong sales of digital content in the first quarter of its fiscal year 2012 (which ended July 30) helped make up for a decline in sales of printed books. The chain credits the Nook, its e-book reader, with strengthening its bottom line. Failure to jump more quickly into the digital frontier is blamed in part for the demise of Borders.

With numbers like that, it appears that E-Books are a growing trend for readers. Add in the fact that prices for E-Books are at or below that of a paperback and that you can carry a whole library of books in a lightweight device and who can argue? Convenience and low cost in one small tidy device.

Call me a traditionalist but I enjoy having the written word on paper, in a book, in my hands. I’m a perpetual page flipper to boot. Constantly looking ahead to see how many pages left in a chapter, or how many chapters are up and coming, or how many total pages there are in the book. This isn’t something that is easy with a device that marks progress in percentages. Overall it gives you a good idea where you are in the story, but it takes away the sense of accomplishment in total number of pages read.

In addition to the increasing number of people who have ereaders and are purchasing E-Books, we’ve seen numerous authors in the ya genre producing stories published in E-Book format only. Many authors have recently released E-Book exclusive shorts. Pittacus Lore released the I Am Number Four: The Lost Files: Six’s Legacy an extra story that elaborates on the character six and her past for the E-Book friendly price of $3.99. While author Michael Scott is set to release his second E-Book short in November titled Billy the Kid and the Vampyres of Vegas: A Lost Story from the Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel a fifty page short for $1.99. His first, a twelve page short, titled The Death of Joan of Arc: A Lost story from the Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel sells for $0.99.

While these stories are affordable and wet the readers appetite for more of their favorite characters in between year long waits for the next book in a series, there are some issues with the E-Book only format. It often leaves many fans of the series feeling left out because they don’t own ereaders. Owning an ereader however, is not a requirement for being able to read these E-Book exclusives, but in order to read them you need to download an ereader program for your computer. Amazon offers a kindle reader for the pc and Barnes and Noble has a similar program for their nook reader format. However, the reader is then glued to their pc in order to read more about their favorite characters. On the flip side, if it wasn’t for E-Book, additional shorts of this nature probably would not be possible, because it’s not economical to print short stories without having additional material to supplement the book. These type of E-Book stories are helping to generate more hype around book series and give readers extra information about their favorite characters and stories. E-book exclusives for existing series are in their infancy, but they are just one more addition that will help shape the E-Book market for the better.

E-Books are also a growing trend for writers trying to emerge onto the scene. With self publishing of E-Books, writers don’t have to take rejection after rejection from publishing companies they can publish it themselves. It’s similar in comparison to what youtube has done for singers. The high quality work can potentially make it big with sales and gain notice by publishers, and the low quality often sinks into a bottomless abyss of forgotten stories. But one does have to wonder if some E-Publishing is diluting the quality of the E-Book market.

All in all E-Readers and E-Books are changing the market of reading, book buying, and publishing. It’s allowing for new and different things that normal paper printing can’t always address. However, ereaders and E-Books are still a hugely developing market, and have some room to grow in order to work out some of the kinks. I’m not sure that E-Books will ever completely replace physical books but it is definitely a market to watch. E-Books will continue to shape the book buying market, and one thing is for certain, E-Books are here to stay.

So what do you the readers think about E-Books and their future?