Ask musicians: analog equipment still has a warmth that no digital piece can match. The great guitarists of our day still use tubed amps. That is just one example.

I’ll always buy books. You can have your digitized perfection.

Merry Christmas,
Chris Zodrow

would an intergrated, interrelatioanl, ecumenical oriented book work if written? i would love to resreach and write such a book. i work on two volumes of the completed biblical library printed by the publishing arm of the assemblies god denomation called the gosple publishing house with a company called world library press. love to discuss this in detail with you, sir.

thanks micheal for sharing your time and place in space so now the ’space time continuim has a little box! how infinately, eternal is that, not!

There is a super-short short story by Isaac Asimov, “The Fun They Had,” which in science fiction depicts an age where some children discover a real book. There is another short story by Walter Van Tilburg Clark, “The Portable Phonograph,” which depicts a lonely scene after the final War where a remote survivor, a professor, has managed to salvage and preserve just a few things to remember past civilization by. These are both worth reading.

But in the “here and now,” I’m thankful Nelson Publishers are still producing fine books. Mine just came off the press (in China, at that!), Nelson’s Cross Reference Guide to the Bible. If you don’t have it, see it under “reference” on Nelson’s main page, and get one.

Every Christian who loves the Bible, and reads it, needs the Cross Reference Guide to the Bible.

We use it in my family many evenings in the week. We sit down, choose a verse in the Bible to study, and read each cross reference in turn. Then, perhaps on another evening, we go back to the verse we studied and follow up the cross references marked with a “+” and turn to those passages in the Cross Reference Guide and read each verse given there in turn. This is one most inspiring and instructive way to get into the Bible, the Word of God.

As for electronic Bibles and books taking over the market, I hardly think this will ever be. Constantly charging and replacing batteries is a nuisance, and should all our technology vanish, the book is still viable, electricity or not!

Their one advantage for me is they save shelf space!

For people who actually read, there is no substitute for a physical book. It is impossible to scroll through a book electronically with the same effect that it is possible to consult the pages of a physical book.

I have many books in electronic form, but I always prefer using the real books on paper.

It saves on our electric usage, too!

What publishers need to do is make better uses of the resources they have access to now but fail to use properly–their published authors.

At present, in my case at least, the author is left totally in the dark about what is happening.

I just did a search for where Nelson’s Cross Reference Guide to the Bible may be purchased locally. The only “in stock” link I found was to the Barnes and Noble Bookstore in Port Huron near where I live. That store has it because I went to the store, showed the book to the manager, and suggested she might like to carry an important Bible reference book by a local author, for I had already informed people that they could get it there.

At this moment, Barnes and Noble is the only website which has a comment from a reader about the Cross Reference Guide. The reader was very pleased with the book.

I prefer a book, a blanket over my feet, and a coffee or tea.

I hope the “backpack” full of books will be the first to go! Already most adults do much of their learning and research online, and younger students are no exception. I, like most of my collegues, do much of my editing, writing, and research on-screen.

But that’s all work.

I think it will be a long time before pleasure-readers are reading on their computer screens, handhelds, Kindles, or even TV screens with any regularity. I think you raise some valid points, but this is all driven by the consumer, and by vast majority, the consumers I’ve heard from want their novels in traditional book form.

People don’t shop at bookstores efficiently, maybe a busy CEO does or has to, but the vast majority go to browse, to seek, to converse, to hunt, to casually read at the book coffee-shops. It’s an adventure. Nor do people read books “efficiently”, reading is enjoyment and savoring, not some process-efficient management-fad concept.

As far as the buying consumer is concerned, the supposed book manufacturing and distribution ‘inefficiencies’ aren’t their problem. You are looking at the situation in reverse. If truly a ‘crisis’ then the publishing industry needs to provide a fix, as the product is still in heavy demand, and where there is demand, there is a market.

Give unto books, what is due unto books, and give unto digital text what is due digital. And video didn’t kill the radio star either.