"I love to read and learn, more than I love books. eBooks help me do more of what I love in a more convenient, and increasingly cost efficient, way. I don’t lament the loss of books. I lament that I don’t have enough time to read every book that interests me, even though I can store them all on my Kindle."
"I love eBooks because they speak directly to one of my most primal fears: that I’ll find myself somewhere—a plane, a broken elevator, a long line—without something to read. Look around any subway car in New York City and you’ll see people pecking away maniacally on their phones like starving sparrows. But I like to read far more than I like to answer email.
One thing that’s surprised me about my eReader is that it’s turned me into a packrat. I buy beloved books that I already own. It’s just too tempting to have all those covers lined up in orderly e-shelves. My justification goes back to that primal fear: What if I break my leg while vacationing in Corsica? I would be stuck reading the Boy Books that crowd revolving stands of English language novels.
Do we have plans for Corsica? No. But who cares? I have the reading material to weather any number of disasters!"
— Eloisa James
"I feel that one of the most miraculous things technology has given the avid reader in recent years is the ebook.
Ebooks offered for sale on the internet allows for readers to explore their excitement by purchasing quickly their favorite authors and allowing for them to easily explore new reading material. It brings unprecedented accessibility to those who may be housebound or who live in remote locations, and it has projected authors and their writing into an international arena like never before.
Another wonderful aspect to the ebook is its versatility. You can read book on your iPhone, e-reader, tablet or your PC. You can take hundreds of books with you in one small device when you go on vacation – no more dithering over how many books will fit into your suitcase, because they all will!
Reading has never been so accessible, and that is an intoxicating thing to a writer like myself who loves both reading and writing."
— Thea Harrison
"If eBooks are doing so well, it’s primarily because of their convenience. EBook readers, whether we are talking about Kindles, iPads, Nooks, Sony Readers or smartphones, can each carry thousands of books. They are usually very light and made to fit inside your schoolbag, purse or, in the case of the iPhone/iPod, in your pocket. Their backlit monitor (for the newer models that have one) means you can read in total darkness or sunshine. And since all recent eBook readers have integrated Wifi (sometimes even 3G) internet access, you can download new books anywhere at any time. There’s no more going to the library or book shortages. EBooks are a world of literature embedded in a single handheld device.
And who wouldn’t want that, really? It’s almost as if you snap your fingers and a new book materializes in front of you. The prices or eBooks are also usually lower than paper books. I never paid more than $9.99 for an eBook. Most of the books I encountered, even bestsellers, have a price tag varying from $5 to $8. EBooks are very affordable."
"I grew up in a world where stories were read aloud. My mother read to me. My father and grandparents invented stories. Some of my earliest memories were listening to stories on the radio as a boy in England. I had a record of Beatrice Lillie reading the poems of Edward Lear that I played until it was one long scratch. …
I was overjoyed the first time one of my publishers let me record one of my own audiobooks, although slightly saddened when she explained that there would soon be no more audiobooks - cassette tape players were vanishing from cars, packaging long books on CD was cost-prohibitive. The audiobook was going to go the way of the dodo.
But the death of the audiobook never happened. …
Of course, there are those who don’t like audiobooks. Critic Harold Bloom said that deep reading really demands the inner ear as well as the outer ear. You need the whole cognitive process, that part of you which is open to wisdom. You need the text in front of you.
I find that astonishingly unconvincing. I think you can have a close and perfectly valid relationship with a text when you hear it. But I’ve met a lot of people who, when asked if they’ve read a book, hesitate and say, well, I’ve listened to it. …
An audiobook is its own thing, a unique medium that goes in through the ear and sometimes leaving you sitting in the driveway to find out how the story is going to end."
