Susan Orlean Quotes

There's been a fragmentation of how the market functions, but I believe printed books are here to stay. People like the tactile experience, the smell of them; there's a great romance to them.

I hope that books don't go the way of albums and CD, large format albums, and physical product.

Look at the world of books nowadays. People just download books. They don't go to a bookstore. Amazon is wiping out Borders and Barnes and Noble. Those are brilliant examples of ephemeralization doing more with less at a better price.

Electronic books are junk.

Hardcovers will never completely disappear. They are delightful to hold; they feel weighty and substantial. But my anecdotal evidence suggests that the world is changing.

I'm entirely of the mindset that when it comes to books, they've got to be paper.

I do not believe that all books will or should migrate onto screens: as Douglas Adams once pointed out to me, more than 20 years before the Kindle turned up, a physical book is like a shark. Sharks are old: there were sharks in the ocean before the dinosaurs. And the reason there are still sharks around is that sharks are better at being sharks than anything else is.

Ebooks had to happen.

Remember that just because major publishing is having trouble, that doesn't mean people have stopped reading books. Printed books won't go away, but ebooks won't go away, either.

Digital reading will completely take over. It's lightweight and it's fantastic for sharing. Over time it will take over.

I've never read an ebook. Print every time.

When I wonder what the future of books will be, I often think about horses. Before automobiles existed, everyone had a horse. Then cars became available, and their convenience, compared to horses, was undeniable.

I sometimes read books on my iPad.

The technology that threatens to kill off books as we know them - the 'physical book,' a new phrase in our language - is also making the physical book capable of being more beautiful than books have been since the middle ages.

I love to read. I have a Kindle, and it's nice to be able to download books that people refer.

I do worry that the days of the physical paper are seriously numbered.

I read actual books. It's cool to read on a Kindle if that's what you want to do, but for me, I like having a bookshelf.

It's not progress to take books off shelves. If one more person says this [ebooks] is the new Gutenberg, I will probably commit homicide, because the whole point of Gutenberg was to put books on shelves, not to take them off.

To compare books to computers, I mean, computers are the way to get books. That is the medium for distributing text because it doesn't require paper.

I am a big fan of the electronic book. I hate to see the old bookstores close, but they have to reinvent themselves. I believe the First Edition bookstore will be the next thing. People will read electronically, then decide they want to own that book. The author will then be invited to the old bookstores to sign. I think books will always be with us, but they will fill a different need.

Electronic distribution is more of a fall-back strategy for putting out a book that isn't deemed profitable enough to print. You hardly make any money publishing an electronic book.

Reading is what people did before YouTube, and I love retro stuff!

They have increased readership, which is good, but I personally am not very turned on by e-books. The physical book has always meant something to me. I'm like the horse who goes back to the stall. I'm not that adventurous.

Honestly, I think we should be delighted people still want to read, be it on a Kindle or a Nook or whatever the latest device is.

I would always want printed books.