It was not so long ago that some were predicting that the end was nigh for printed books. However, in the UK at least, it is being reported that ebook sales are now declining whilst sales of printed books are on the rise.
The other day I came across this excellent quote by Stephen Fry (see below) about Kindle. This got me thinking about what my fellow authors think about ebooks/ebook readers. On conducting some research I discovered these perceptive and amusing author quotes on the subject. Here are 15 author quotes about ebooks/ebook readers:
Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators. — Stephen Fry
Lovers of print are simply confusing the plate for the food. — Douglas Adams
It seems to me that anyone whose library consists of a Kindle lying on a table is some sort of bloodless nerd. — Penelope Lively
Life without a Kindle is like life without a library nearby. — Franz S. McLaren, Home Lost
Growing up in the digital age, I’m expected to embrace all forms of modern technology with blissful ignorance. Books were always one of few escapes from this, because reading a book means not having to look at another damned glowing screen… — Rebecca McNutt
F@@k them is what I say. I hate those ebooks. They can not be the future. They may well be. I will be dead. I won’t give a s@@t. — Maurice Sendak
I guess you can call me “old fashioned”. I prefer the book with the pages that you can actually turn. Sure, I may have to lick the tip of my fingers so that the pages don’t stick together… — Felicia Johnson
Have they all bought Kindles? I have one, and I use it most nights. I always imagine the books staring and whispering, Traitor! – but come on, I have a lot of free first chapters to get through. — Robin Sloan
Stock complaints about the inherent pleasure of ye olde format are bandied about whenever some new upstart invention comes along. Each moan is nothing more than a little foetus of nostalgia jerking in your gut. — Charlie Brooker
If e-book readers were invented before print books, (petty things such as) the smell of ink would have been some people’s only reason for not abandoning e-books. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana
They’ll get my Kindle when they pry it from my cold dead hands, if my corpse will release it. — Elizabeth Horton-Newton
Electronic books are ideal for people who value the information contained in them, or who have vision problems, or who like to read on the subway, or who do not want other people to see how they are amusing themselves, or who have storage and clutter issues, but they are useless for people who are engaged in an intense, lifelong love affair with books… — Joe Queenan, One for the Books
If you drop a book into the toilet, you can fish it out, dry it off and read that book. But if you drop your Kindle in the toilet, you’re pretty well done. — Stephen King
You don’t see people getting pulled over by the police for reading ebooks on their smartphones. — Jason Merkoski
How do you press a wildflower into the pages of an e-book? — Lewis Buzbee, The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop: A Memoir, a History