e-books
What is the Amazon bookstore for?
Amazon sells books at their brick-and-mortar stores, but that's not why they want me to come.
by Amy Frykholm
Knowing your readers
Ten years ago, I studied readers of the then popular Left Behind series of Christian apocalyptic novels. If I conducted that study today, I would potentially have access to far more objective data about readers than I did. How quickly do they read? Where do they stop reading? What passages do they mark? Do they write notes in the margins?
E-books are providing companies with the opportunity for all of this information and more about people who use e-readers like the Nook and Kindle.
The lure of books
E-books have their critics, but sales are on the rise. One thing seems certain: people will go on reading books, in whatever form.
Booting up books: The codex will survive
Hardly a day passes without someone declaring the death of the book. Recently Lisa Miller of Newsweek viewed an electronic edition of the Bible that was replete with linked maps, a commentary and dictionary, and 700 paintings depicting biblical scenes. Astonished, she sputtered, “This is the beginning of the end of the Word.”Theologically, the future of the Word as the Bible remains assured. That is because the God met in Israel and Jesus Christ acts in history, and the church (as well as the synagogue) can give no remotely adequate account of its faith and practice without resort to the memory of a story that's been preserved via the spoken and written word.