English Unlimited HAK/HUM 2, Schulbuch mit Audio-CD und CD-ROM

134 Now and then 10 LANGUAGE SKILLS EXPLORE LOOK AGAIN EXTRAS Have you ever heard of Kindle, Kobo or Tolino Shine? What are they? What do you think are the advantages / disadvantages of e-readers? Read the text below, then complete the sentences (1–6) using a maximum of four words. Write your answers in the spaces provided. The first one (0) has been done for you. 38 a Explore reading: The return of the book WhenAmazon launched a British version of Kindle in 2010, publishers, booksellers and readers predicted the death of printed books. Wherever one looked, on buses, planes, trains and the underground, people were staring at their e-readers rather than reading paperbacks or newspapers. Within a year, British e-book sales went up by 366%. In the same year, e-book sales overtook the sales of paperbacks for the first time on US Amazon. However, the printed book apocalypse never came. The rise in e-book sales in both the UK and the USA has even started to slow down, from almost 400% in 2011 to a modest 16% in 2012. A survey in the States showed that, of regular readers, only 30% had read an e-book in the past twelve months, while almost 89% had read a printed book. Moreover, 90% of people who use e-readers still read print. How come that the rise in e-book sales is slowing while the good old printed book is still going strong after 500 years in the business? Why is it that readers are becoming less enthusiastic about this wonderful new gadget that allows them to upload up to 1,000 virtual books while weighing less than a small apple? Some experts think what people like about printed books is their physical characteristics: You can admire them on your bookshelves, touch them, smell them, keep your page in them, flick through their pages and borrow or lend them. The layout is better, and they don’t break when you drop them. Book lovers can feel affectionate towards them and even form a kind of emotional attachment. This is more than can be said about e-readers, which for many people are no more than a piece of plastic. Research has found out a few other interesting things. Firstly, people are more likely to remember things they read in a printed book than to recall information they came across on an e-reader. Secondly, thrillers, crime and cheap novels seem to be a market niche for e-books – in other words, books one will never read again. Thirdly, e-books are used for a specific kind of reading. You don’t want to be weighed down by kilos of reading matter when commuting and travelling, for example. And finally, e-books have boosted sales of relatively expensive hardbacks. These beautifully made items with covers, which have often been designed by artists, are objects of desire for bookworms all over the world. In short, the initial enthusiasm for electronic books appears to be growing weaker, and many readers have started wandering back to the good old paperback. Three years after their introduction, e-books only account for about 14% of book sales in Great Britain. The return of the book 39 b 0 After Kindle was introduced, many people expected of traditional books. Q1 After some years, the increase in e-book sales began . Q2 Although you can upload as many as 1,000 books to them, e-readers are very . Q3 Readers hardly ever develop an emotional attachment . Q4 On the whole, people what they read in printed books compared to what they read on e-readers. Q5 The three genres that e-books do particulary well in are . Q6 However, many book lovers still beautifully made hardbacks to e-readers. the end / death Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv