Blog #8

1.The printing press was such an important and revolutionary invention because before the printing press, authors had to hand make their books which took time and made the books more expensive.  The printing press also allowed information to spread further so people could have access to the information. Due to the printing press invention, books were made cheaper because they were not handmade, the size was reduced, and it was much faster to publish. The only people who could buy the handmade books were people who were very wealthy like religious leaders and royal families.  

2. The reason why the sales of printed and CD encyclopedias decreased was because of the invention of digital encyclopedias. People began using search engines like Google and Wikipedia to look up information instead of using encyclopedias. Encyclopedias today are going digital but are still struggling because searchers rely more on Google and other online resources.    

3. Book and movie industries are similar because they talk about recent events that have happened. Book industries have also were very successful writing about government reports. Just like movie industries, the book industry have wrote books on important events like the assassination of President Kennedy and the marriage of prince William and Kate Middleton.

4. The kindle was very successful than other e-book devices because the Kindle was the first ever to make an electronic paper that was easy-on-the-eyes. The kindle also made wireless e-book downloads from Amazon’s online bookstore. Then Kindle made the Kindle fire which is where readers could browse the internet. The reason why other devices failed was because their devices were expensive and Kindle was the least expensive device to use.

5.The major issues on the debate of digitalizing millions of books for Web search engines was that Web search engines such as Google had too much power to profit from millions of books but Google didn’t get the copyright permission first. They then began a nonprofit service to stop this issue.

6. When a book is challenged it means that the book is removed from the library collection because there have been complaints due to offensive language, violence, nudity, racism and so on. When a book is banned it is because they have challenged authority and promoted radical ideas.

7. The growth of book superstores made a great impact on other bookstores because they had coffee shops in their stores along with selling recorded music and having live performances in their stores.  Other bookstores began to go bankrupt due to the growth of these superstores because the superstores began taking older bookstores customers.

8. The concerns of Amazon’s powerful role in determining book pricing and having its own publishing divisions is that Amazon expanded to its own publishing company.  This allowed Amazon to become too powerful because they competed with other e-book companies trying to decrease the prices of books so that customers will buy the book from their website.

9. Andrew Carnegie’s built 2,500 public libraries in the U.S., Britain, Australia, and New Zealand because he thought that libraries was great  learning opportunity for people who lived in those countries but especially for immigrants because Carnegie was one.