Emily Reno examines the positive and negative impacts of e-readers. While e-readers allow easy access to many books, their manufacturing process relies heavily on fossil fuels and minerals. Producing a single e-reader requires 50 times more fossil fuel than producing a paper book. Additionally, e-readers have short lifespans of only 2 years on average and are disposed of in an environmentally unfriendly way. However, e-readers do make literature more accessible and reduce the environmental impact of paper production, though a bookless future could negatively impact cultural knowledge if energy crises occur. Overall, e-readers are seen as an inevitable part of the future of reading.

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Emily Reno
Ms. Bennett
British Literature
25 March 2012
The Positive and Negative Impact of E-Readers
Before delving into this topic, research had to be done to uncover what an e-reader really
was. Just with a single click, an avid reader can begin a collection of books in a single slim and
sleek device. Hundreds of books soon fill the device right in the reader‟s fingertips. According to
Dictionary.com, an e-reader is a portable electronic device used for reading books and other text
materials that are in digital form. But how is it made? What does it take to make it? How does it
impact the world? What are the prospects for a possible bookless future? No one ever takes the
time to ask those questions. All the authors and readers of the world see is something to make the
world of literature more efficient and, in some cases, more bearable. The basic e-reader is a shiny
new toy that publishers love until it breaks and needs to be replaced. In order to fully understand
how such a promising product could be potentially bad, an examination of the basic e-reader is
necessary.
To give an intriguing fact, a single electronic reader has a minimum library that can hold
up to fifty volumes. E-readers are produced by various companies –not just one manufacturer.
The most common e-readers out there are the Amazon Kindle, the Nook, and the Apple iPad. At
first, the Kindle and Nook were strictly for reading, but since Apple added books to the iPad
market, Kindle and Nook released new designs using touch screen, expanded capacity, and
added similar features that compete with the iPad. Though the Apple iPad may have more
features than the basic e-reader, the Kindle competes by having different kinds of the product

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including one with a matte screen for easy reading in sunlight. But how they are made, may
dishearten some avid readers.
In “Brave New Book World,” throughout the article, there is nothing but positive
feedback on e-readers and how they will make a difference in the world of literature. The author
of the article believes that e-readers will save publishing by making it easier, the economy by
bringing in more money from book sales, and the environment by reducing the use of trees.
NicBoshart states, “The internet, meanwhile, helps level the field for authors and independent
publishers everywhere, enabling them to reach an international readership. There will still be
blockbuster books, but there will also be a more equitable distribution of sales among other titles.
Using social media, authors can build and maintain a global audience.” Where it may be a breeze
to publish books now with this new found technology, are all of those statements true? Also
according to “Brave New Book World,” the author believes that paperback books will be the first
to disappear from books‟ physical existence. If avid readers read that article and that article
alone, they would only see the benefits to owning an e-reader like an empty bookshelf. As read
in the article entitled “Are E-Books Any Good,” “according to School Library Journal‟s (SLJ)
2011 technology survey, only 29 percent of elementary schools had e-books in their collections,
compared to 64 percent of high schools. Online e-books have been typically seen as extras, mere
drops in the bucket when it comes to a library‟s goal of exposing young readers to new stories
and high-quality children‟s literature (Guernsey).” But as the years progress and technology
expands, becoming more appealing, schools are now broadening their e-reading library.
At first, the basic e-reader put out to be a very promising and satisfying product, but
when researching the rather multifaceted manufacturing process, nothing seems to be as
promising as it first seemed to be. It turns into something quite disheartening. In “The Price of

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the Paperless Revolution,” it is stated that the New York Times calculated that in order to produce
just one e-reader, it requires minerals, water, and fossil fuels to be calculated into the
manufacturing process. Gas prices have been on the rise, yet manufacturers are using fossil fuels
on a product that only has an average life-span of two years? Most readers purchase an e-reader
not knowing that they will be replacing it with something newer and better before two years is
even up. Whether it breaks or something better comes along or the reader has no more use for it,
it is disposed of inefficiently and pollutes our environment. Moreover, it takes almost exactly
fifty times as much fossil fuel production to power an iPad for the hours it takes to read a book as
it would take to read the same book on paper by electric light. The distinctions between the
positive and negative articles are very, very clear.
Looking back at how large a single e-reader‟s library is, having an endless collection of
books compiled into a single device first seems like a librarian‟s fantasy coming true. But what
happens when all the materials used to make e-readers are gone, there are no newspapers or
books to read and the world becomes stuck in an energy crisis? What are people going to read? It
would be like caveman times living in some dark cave. Not only would the world be unknowing,
but life really would be a dark cave without fossil fuels. But of course, most will always think of
the „paperless revolution‟ is ingenious. There is no denying that e-readers are a great milestone in
the growth of technology, but the fun of being able to turn a page will be missed. The current
outlook for books is that someday, they will not exist. As it is stated in “The Bookless Future,”
“But the internet revolution is soon likely to become much more controversial, and for a simple
reason: scholarship is fast moving toward a bookless future. Physical books are expensive to
produce, and they are easily damaged or stolen. Shelf space costs money to build. Shelving and
re-shelving books costs more. Stacks have to be kept at the appropriate temperature and

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humidity; they need to be lit, cleaned, inspected, and insured (Bell).” Producing physical copies
of books costs a lot, but what in this world is cheap other than the cheap labor that is received
from other countries? Also, trees can be grown –fossil fuels cannot. All in all, there are some
good points brought to attention about price, but it is not like producing e-readers is a lot
cheaper.
Given the information, personal opinions change slightly, but do not affect the decision
of purchasing an e-reader in the near future. Stopping the technology world from blossoming is
impossible and it will soon become a part of everyday life. E-readers are literature‟s future and
will certainly make a difference in the reading experience.