Every year the world’s largest book fair is held here in Guadalajara. You have to almost swim across the sea of people lost in the business, medicine, literary and who knows what other category sections. The largest publishing houses in the world come and exhibit their Nobel prize winners, Pulitzers, criticisms. But most of all, they give people a chance to acquire rare books.
For the most part, that’s always been the fair’s general flavor. This time however, with the Kindle and iPad at full growth speed, almost every stand had e-books available for these devices. Some people didn’t know what they were being told, so, as older generations, they were pulled in with loads of information by the stands’ staff.
It made me think: with the tons of print paper backs and hard covers waiting to be purchased and read (and so they did) there were also eager people of all ages to know everything about this new version of readership. The mystery remained that although there were representative stands of Mac distributors, Mac Store per se was nowhere to be found.
With all this hunger to buy the novelty, and with a vast supply of e-books, there was one thing missing: the device. But even with that small glitch, I have no doubt that as soon as people left the fair, at least a significant number of them went looking for it at the store.
It was fun to look at people sitting down at set up mini cafe’s around the floor, opening their fresh purchases and practically smelling the sheets in their books with a cup of coffee in hand. Still readership hasn’t lost its magic.