I'll admit that living in the US, I don't often consider what technology may or may not be available in other parts of the world. I mean, it's obvious that people in countries like Niger are more worried about putting food on the table than they are about the Kindle Fire. And I know that when my boyfriend had to go on all these business trips to Moscow last year, people over there were always asking him to bring iPhones and other devices that they had a hard time obtaining.
But I sort of made an assumption that people in countries like Australia or the UK were about as into e-readers as customers in the US, and it turns out I was probably wrong about that. It seems the UK has been slower to adopt e-readers than the US. The essay linked to (from the Huffington Post UK) lists some reasons why: price, timelines of technology release, availability of more bookstores, and stubbornness (or resistance to change). (There have been some e-book pricing inquiries in the news lately, as well, some in the EU and maybe now in the US.)
Well, I'm stubborn as well, though I'm not British. To a degree. I had no problem giving up physical CDs for an iPod, but to me, books are something different. I care about physical books. Whereas I never read liner notes with CDs. I was only interested in them for the music, and an iPod allows me to carry around thousands of songs and listen to whatever I want, whenever I want. I've said it before, but I don't use books the same way I use music -- I want to finish a book before I move on to the next one -- and maybe that colors my opinion.
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