Barnes & Noble is looking to close one-third of its locations. Brooke Payne, a senior English major, gave her thoughts on why Barnes & Noble is closing so many of its doors.
“I think it’s happening because stores, such as Amazon, offer cheaper prices than the actual bookstores themselves,” Payne said.
Junior Theater and Spanish major Avery Sharpe agrees with Payne while adding, “there is a non-necessity for physical books,” given the high availability e-books.
People no longer need to get in their cars and drive to a bookstore if they want to buy a book. Now they can order a physical book from Amazon or they can purchase one-book to read on their Nook or Kindle.
According to Sharpe, book lovers are reading books on their smart phones or tablets because e-books “are more durable”; it is always available online, the pages cannot be ruined by spilled coffee and friends do not have to remember to return borrowed books.
Devices like Kindle, Nook and Google Books make reading more accessible to the public.
It is much easier to pack your Kindle into your suitcase than to pack each individual book you want to read on your trip.
So do readers still prefer to actually hold a book in their hands, or would they rather have their library readily available with the swipe of a finger?
Although Payne owns a Kindle, she still prefers a physical book. Why? “Because it smells so good,” Payne says, and she loves flipping actual pages. Sharpe, on the other hand,
finds that “digital books are more efficient.” It is easier to find book reviews, and they are generally cheaper.
So is technology making print books a non-necessity like Sharpe believes? Are books cheaper on Amazon or in digital form?
The important thing is reading. For readers such as Payne and Sharpe, it is about the love of reading, the adventure and the escape that a good novel can provide.
Payne loves “escaping into another world for a little while, just long enough to let your mind escape and think about other things.”Whereas Sharpe infers that he “just likes a good story; I don’t care what form it comes in.”
