The ever-growing kindle popularity proves a threat to bookstores and libraries alike but will Amazon’s nifty little product fully eradicate the leather-bound books we have grown to know and love?

While I was researching this impediment I discovered e-book revenue alone accounts for 17.5% of Penguin’s global revenue. I also found that as the e-book profits rose publisher profits dropped and by 12% according to thebookseller.com. This statistic alone shows the impact that digital-life creates and in turn raises a concern for me and my compact bookshelf.

The Kindle can’t fake the pleasures printed book gives: the musty smell, the tear-stained pages, the rifling through pages and pages of beautiful words. The Kindle is just a weak representation of printed books. It may have highlighted words, dictionaries and wi-fi but it doesn’t hold the same value as books hold. However, regardless of all that, it still remains popular.

I personally am devoted to books in print. I have used a Kindle however, I could never concentrate whether I was reading Aesop Fables or Pride and Prejudice. I do have to admit the kindle has its advantages. Kindle saves trees and can store thousands of e-books but to me the kindle can never evoke the same emotions as a print book can.

I am a bit over-protective when it comes to my books; that means no food and I mean no food has a place near my library; some rule I had to enforce a while back after seeing my brand-new book tarnished with strawberry jam as a result of my sister and her sticky fingers. But one thing I love about books is the signs of age. That means the yellowing of pages and the breaking of the spine which is something you can’t see in e-books; it means the memories the book holds and the journey it has been through. If books could talk I would have a fair bit of explaining to do. The general wear and tear tells the world the book has been loved and the book is mine. That copy of ‘where rainbows end’ is my copy of ‘where rainbows end’ and mine alone.

The bottom line is readers want low prices but is that really the same as fair prices? On a Kindle it is easy to copy and distribute e-books and, while that may be free, it is piracy. For those not brushed up on their basic law piracy is illegal and means the author, whose time and tears spent on the book you are reading, gets no pay-out. Is that really fair? With a printed book you know the author and the people involved in making the book is well-off. In fact you could say printed books is the new, or rather old, fair trade.

In conclusion, I have to say Kindle won’t spell the end for books in print. It may mean printed books will lose some of its followers but readers such as me will always be devoted to the paperbacks and hardbacks we have grown up with.