The Impact of eBooks on the Purchase and Reading of Fiction and Non-Fiction (Essay Sample)

The Impact of eBooks on the Purchase and Reading of Fiction and Non-Fiction
Alex Young
To the Chief Editor
March 20, 2014
The Impact of eBooks on the Purchase and Reading of Fiction and Non-Fiction
This essay explores the way eBooks might persuade how consumers buy and read fiction and non-fiction. For a number of centuries, reading has fundamentally been a private endeavor, and personal interaction involving the person who reads and the written words on a piece of paper. In contrast, the launching of eBooks has influenced a profound inclination in way people read, and has transformed the reading activity into a quasi-public, and computable endeavor. It is imperative to state that eBooks have been accessible over the Internet since the 1990s. This was a period when advancements in Information Technology facilitated versatile and cost-effective production, distribution, and storage of texts in virtual format. In addition, abstaining from text printing facilitates a publisher in availing new editions in epigrammatic cycles, as well periodical review of electronic text.
            In the preceding times, authors and publishers lacked the capability to monitor what transpired when a reader picks on a book. This implies that it was impracticable to distinguish if the reader stopped after a few pages, or disregarded the preamble. In the contemporary times, eBooks offer signs that relate to the changes in sales statistics, and divulge the number of persons who purchase which books, as well as their reading intensity. Leading e-books publishers for instance Amazon, Apple, and Google, hold the capability to monitor the interaction between a reader and the procured eBook (Steinbach, 2009). This monitoring entails the amount of time spent in reading, the pages read, and the search terms employed in searching for the eBooks.
            It is evident that eBooks have consequently revolutionized the purchase and reading tendencies in a number of readers. This is largely as a result of the increasingly uncomplicated availability of eBooks across linguistic boundaries. Several eBook advocates emphasize that the environment, under which readers access the text, promotes eBooks as the best reading material (Steinbach, 2009). This assertion is informed by the unique ways through which eBooks facilitate readers in their interaction with the text.
            Studies have demonstrated that non-fiction eBooks bear a tendency to be read in parts, while fiction eBooks are typically read from the preface to the conclusion. In contrast, the lengthy eBooks in the non-fiction category bear a tendency to be dumped earlier. Crime-fiction, science-fiction and romance readers usually read more eBooks faster than the readers of literary fiction, and complete the majority of the eBooks that they begin reading (Berger, 2010). Literary fiction readers abandon books frequently and bear a tendency to jump between books, as opposed to non-fiction readers.
            The escalating popularity of ...