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kgb_ Special Agents are voracious and absorbed in their search for the answers to America’s questions.  And what does America want to know, you ask?  Well, today’s buzz centers on leisure time reading in America:

Do people really read e-books?

Know more:

The book world is changing.

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com, recently reported that more shoppers bought Kindle e-books than physical books on Christmas Day and Kindle sales set a new Amazon sales record (see video below.)

Writer Nicholas Carr, a lifelong book reader, describes his impatience when he sits down with a book these past few years.  After a few paragraphs he’s thinking about hyperlinks, email and online interaction.  He suggests that the internet is training Americans to read in a “distracted and disjointed way.”

Some suggest that writers will be changing the way they write in order to attract an attention-challenged audience, accustomed to scanning, extracting, and moving on.

Not enough time to curl up with a good e-book?  Novelist Rick Moody recently wrote a story using the Twitter platform.  140-character Twitter posts upon posts upon posts make up the story in its entirety. He compares it to writing haiku.

While many believe that Twitter books won’t have any staying power, some suggest that cell phone novels might have some promise.  Cell phone books are already popular in Japan and have attention-grabbing themes like sex and violence.

The popularity of the Kindle is challenging authors to create text that inspires the reader to scroll, scroll, scroll rather than turn a page.  Satisfying e-books have narrative that is fast -  without slow lingerings around language.

Literary experts say the next decade will tell us whether e-books will push traditional books away from popular culture.

Kindle Sets Amazon Sales Record

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Source:  How E-Books Will Change Reading And Writing