Introduction
For hundreds of years, books have been the foundation of the society in which we live and especially beginning from the time the printing press was invented. This invention is possibly the most significant in the history of a human being. However, in the current day, advancement in technology has started to bring in radical changes in the role that is played by books in our society. There has been emerging of the electronic book (e-book) and its popularity is increasing, especially starting from the time Amazon Kindle was launched (Randall1). The gain in the momentum of the e-book has resulted from its portability since it takes up no space and can be read on various devices. The capacity to come across e-books has led the hardcovers to be outdated for some people. No matter how a person may feel about electronic books, it is evident that this kind of book provides efficiency which can not be offered by print books and they are turning out to be a common format for the sellers of books as well as the libraries (Parr Par. 2). In this paper I am going to argue that print books should be replaced by electronic books and these books should be used for everyday living and in school.
Reasons for replacing print books with electronic books
E-books are quicker to obtain than print books. If someone is looking for specific information and this information can be obtained from a book, the person can buy an e-book and be able to download it immediately. The information can be accessed as soon as possible from an e-book instead of waiting for a print book to be delivered to the person (Angier Par. 3).
There is easy upgrading and updating of an e-book, unlike a print book. In the current day, there is rapid changing of information. Books covering various subjects can easily get outdated and there is a need to update the information so that people accessing the information can be assisted in the best way possible. When it comes to updating and upgrading e-books, this can be carried out with a lot of ease and with speed. This is not the case with print books. Updating the print books takes more time and it may mean coming up with new editions which the reader has to purchase again. This advantage of easily updating and upgrading an e-book is indicated by Mcdonald (2) where he points out that among those features of the e-book that are seen to be exciting is the potential for this kind of book to be immediately updated and upgraded. “Because of the lead time necessary to produce physical textbooks, information in them is often out sync with the latest findings in any field. If e-readers could download changes and automatically update text, students could better keep up” (Mcdonald 2).
Less space is taken up by the e-Books. This implies that a person may have a large number of books on his or her computer. This saves space and there is no need of having a bulky library. Having copies of thousands of print books will require having adequate space to keep these books. More so, this also makes it easier for family members and other groups of people like co-workers to share information.
The use of e-books helps conserve and protect the environment. These books do not need the use of papers, which are obtained from the tree products. There is less use of natural resources in producing e-books. On the other hand, print books require the use of natural resources such as trees. Therefore by replacing the print books with e-books there will be a saving of trees and this will also assist in the reduction of pollution which results from pulp mills (Angier Para 6).
E-books are more portable. It is very much easy for an individual to move from one place to the other carrying thousands of e-books on his or her computer. This is not possible when considering carrying a large number of print books. Carrying thousands of print books from one place to another may be very much costly and this can not even be done most often as compared to the e-books (Viney 15).
The references in the e-books can be hot-linked. When using print books, it can not be very easy to access the sites that are referenced as well as the websites. However, this problem is overcome in the e-books since the references can be hot-linked. When using e-books, a person can just click on the hot links so that he or she can be able to read more about the materials that are referenced. As time goes by, the creation of wireless networks will cause this to turn out to be of even much more importance and use (Viney 15).
By using an e-book, an individual can carry out global searches and be able to obtain information faster. When a person is seeking particular information in an e-book, he or she can access this information more easily by making use of the “find” option. This plays a major role in saving time as well as avoiding confusion in the process of searching the information. This is not the case when using print and therefore this is among the reasons for considering replacing print books with e-books (Angier Para 9).
Conclusion
Electronic books have several advantages over print books. Therefore based on these advantages, e-books should replace print books. Among the reasons for replacing the print books with e-books are that the ebooks are easily updated and upgraded to avoid outdated information, they are more portable, they can be obtained more quickly, they help in conserving the environment and also by using them, they use less space, and a person can easily and quickly obtain the information required from these kinds of books. These are advantages that can not be enjoyed when using print books.
Technology will improve even more as time goes by. In the current day, the introduction of the electronic book is a technology that is emerging. In our society, whenever every new technology comes up, people are slow in adopting this technology. However, with the improvement of the quality of the monitors so that they turn out to be more mobile and compact, the number of people who will engage in reading the electronic books will increase as time goes by. People will come to realize the importance of using electronic books instead of using traditional print books.
Works Cited
Angier Michael, “Top ten reasons why ebooks are better than print books”. 2003. Web.
Mcdonald Sam, “Comparing e-readers for back to school”. McClatchy – Tribune Business News 7 August 2010 ProQuest Newsstand, ProQuest. Web.
Parr Ben, “Reading faceoff: E-books vs. print books”. 2010. Web.
Randall Stross, “E-Book Wars: The Specialist vs. the Multitasker: [Money and Business/Financial Desk]”. New York Times. 2010, Late Edition (East Coast): New York Times, ProQuest. Web.
Viney David, The eBook self-publishing guide: Desktop to Amazon in 10 easy steps. London: Mercury Web Publishing, 2005.