SF Signal: Cory Doctorow on Reading Books From Screens

Cory Doctorow on Reading Books From Screens

Locus Online has printed Cory Doctorow's column from the March isssue of Locus magazine. Here's a snippet of the article You Do Like Reading Off a Computer Screen:

Electronic books are a wonderful adjunct to print books. It's great to have a couple hundred novels in your pocket when the plane doesn't take off or the line is too long at the post office. It's cool to be able to search the text of a novel to find a beloved passage. It's excellent to use a novel socially, sending it to your friends, pasting it into your sig file.

But the numbers tell their own story - people who read off of screens all day long buy lots of print books and read them primarily on paper. There are some who prefer an all-electronic existence (I'd like to be able to get rid of the objects after my first reading, but keep the e-books around for reference), but they're in a tiny minority.