People who read e-books on tablets like the iPad are realising that while a book in print or on a black-and-white Kindle is straightforward and immersive, a tablet offers a menu of distractions that can fragment the reading experience, or stop it in its tracks.
E-mail lurks tantalisingly within reach. Looking up a tricky word or unknown fact in the book is easily accomplished through a quick Google search. And if a book starts to drag, giving up on it to stream a movie over Netflix or scroll through your Twitter feed is only a few taps away.
For book publishers the rise of tablets poses a potential danger: that book buyers may switch to tablets and then discover that they just aren?t very amenable to reading.
That adds up to a reading experience that is more like a 21st-century cacophony than a traditional solitary activity. And some of the millions of consumers who have bought tablets and sampled e-books on apps from Amazon, Apple and Barnes & Noble have come away with a conclusion: It?s harder then ever to sit down and focus on reading.
Many publishers believe that the market for both print books and black-and-white e-readers is not going away, despite the pull of tablets. As long as e-readers remain significantly less expensive than tablets, there may be a market for them for a long time.
Indeed, the basic menu for the Kindle Fire offers links to video, apps, the Web, music, newsstand and books, effectively making books just another menu option.