I recently re-discovered a piece from 2004 by science fiction writer and digital activist Cory Doctorow, on eBooks — called "Ebooks: Neither E, Nor Books," it looks at the differences between eBooks and traditional books (this being an evolution in itself), and talks about the future of publishing.
It's short and well-written, and I'd highly recommend it as being worth a look if you are interested in the overlap of technology and intellectual property for the future of books.
For me, electronic books are my preferred form of reading — I've read everything for the eLLM so far in electronic form, and nearly all my personal reading is electronic, too. Nowadays, when I come to buy a new book, if something is not available in electronic form, there's a high likelihood that I'm not going to buy it — whether this is an "official" eBook, or an "unofficial" eBook, I don't really mind, although my preference is for the former, even if it means I need to invest time stripping the DRM from the book.
The ability to have a whole reference library with me when I travel, to be able to search through books on my computer, to be able to cut-and-past quotations, to be able to make my own annotations and comments searchable and so on have made hard-copy books pretty much redundant for me — things which take up shelf space.
Have a look at Cory's article, and see what you think. Do you see much of a future for printed books? Or are electronic books the way forward?
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