E-Readers Gaining in Popularity Fast but the South Brunswick Library Still Has What You Need

Leisure reading is not taking a backseat to the distractions of the digital world anytime soon, not according to the most recent eye-popping statistics on e-books.

As the number of digital, or "e-books," sold eclipse those of traditional paperback and even hardback books, lending institutions such as the South Brunswick Public Library are experiencing a similar phenomenon.

The increased interest in acquiring e-books is catching up quickly to public interest in borrowing books, audio books, music, and movies.

It's entirely possible that your next door neighbor, or more likely their teens and adolescents, are reading an e-book right now.

Beginning in February of 2010 through the end of December of 2010, the South Brunswick Public Library "checked out" 567 e-books.  This total is about one percent of the Library's total circulation of 583,877 items checked out for that year.

Compared with the first four months of 2011, the number of e-books checked out here has already dwarfed that 2010 total for 11 months.  Between January 2011 until today, more than 619 e-books have been loaned through the South Brunswick Public Library.

Apparently we are experiencing the same shift to digital as book sellers nationwide.

"We now sell twice as many e-books as we do physical books at BN.com," Barnes & Noble's chief executive William Lynch was recently quoted on the website. 

Electronic books are now reportedly the most popular format on Amazon.com, where Kindle e-book sales have overtaken paperback book sales.  Amazon experts project e-book sales to eclipse both its paperback and its hardback sales by the end of 2011.  

Digital sales at Amazon toppled hardback sales along for the first time in the United States months ago, selling 143 digital books for every loo hardback books sold.

According to the front page of a recent New York Times, the rise in E-Book popularity is due to young adult readers with generous benefactors.  It appears that adults and the young adults they buy for have taken a real shine to digital reading devices within the past 12 months, especially popular brands such as the Nook and Kindle.

According to marketing research by the American Library Asssociation, more than 4 million e-readers were expected to be sold by the end of this past holiday season.

Some like e-readers it for their obvious portability, and some for some their anonymity.  Sales of romance novels reportedly spiked as users of e-readers can read a novel without also exposing the telltale tawdry cover art of the paperback books.

Buying or borrowing, for many people the e-books and their e-readers are more than just a fun new way to enjoy reading.  They are also more affordable.  There are literally thousands of downloadable classic novel e-books available absolutely free, free because they exist in the public domain. 

Free is what libraries have been about from day one and it hasn't changed for e-books.  If you prefer not to buy an e-book you can simply borrow it  through many public libraries. 

The South Brunswick Public Library, which participates in the Libraries of Middlesex Automation Consortium, provides hundreds of e-book titles through ListenNJ. 

We also offer links to free e-libraries including PlanetBook and Project Gutenberg.  You can find us at www.sbpl.info. 

From the comfort of home, a SBPL card holder really has their choice of sources through the links to our Library website. You can browse a collection and download an e-book anytime, anywhere.

Our librarians will help you with the download process if needed. Just ask!

Libraries are still in the lending business, so to check out an e-book, you will need a valid library card and Internet connection. Once downloaded, digital media can be enjoyed on a computer and transferred to most MP3 players, iPods®, or Smartphones, for example. At the end of the lending period, titles automatically expire and return to the collection. 

For more information about what you can find at the South Brunswick Public Library for your digital devices, visit www.sbpl.info/DigitalAudioBooks.