Apple’s iPad & Other eReaders/Tablets to Bring the End of Publishing Unless They Don’t

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The iPad has finally landed and we are getting ready to embrace this new trend. Whether we like it or not and whether publishers like it or not, gadgets like the iPad will keep coming at us and eventually everyone will own some sort of tablet and/or eBook reader to help us through our complicated days.

But that doesn’t that we’ll simply stop reading books, does it? Does it matter if we actually read a real book which took an awful lot of effort to be printed and delivered to us or if we read the digital version of it?

It doesn’t matter to you and me, the consumers, but on the long run it could hurt publishers where they care most, their pockets. Because eBooks will be a lot cheaper to buy on an iPad or on a Kindle and that’s not a secret anymore. And at some point in the distant future writers could decide to simply ditch the middleman and deal directly with Amazon or Apple and with anyone else that has a digital eBook store.

Why am I telling you all this? Well I’m just preparing you for this video below which tells the whole story of books, publishers, iPad-like devices, reading, culture and a whole lot more.

In order to see the magic of this smart video you’ll have to watch it completely. Although I do appreciate the point it tries to make and although I do love reading paperback books whenever I have the time, I will tell the creator of this amazing video that a book, no matter how good it feels in my hands, will never let me browse through location-based services available to me at all times and it will not let me reconnect with friends and families when I don’t feel like reading. That’s what smartphones, tablets and computers will do for me while also letting me read various books.

What about you? Should you have to choose between a tablet/eBook reader and books, what would you get and why?