Digital readers and ebooks are supposed to be the future, but yet there are still plenty of books that are being created physically in print form, and let’s not forget that there are plenty of bookshops that are still alive and well. However we cannot deny the convenience of ebooks so who’s to say that they can’t exist side-by-side?
The good news is that if you have a ton of physical books that you’d like to get an ebook version of, but would rather not pay for them all over again, an app called Shelfie might be worth checking out. Basically what the app does is it scans your bookshelves for books. From there the app will check to see if there are any digital versions of the books found on your shelves.
If there is, you will be sent an email a free copy or a discounted version of the book. Granted in some cases you might actually need to pay for the book, but it will be discounted which will hopefully take the sting off it. It’s a great idea but won’t apps like Shelfie lead to the decline of brick and mortar book stores?
Like we said, both formats can exist side-by-side. In fact according to BitLit (the company behind Shelfie), “Our in-store promotions with bookstores have shown that readers buy more books when the eBook is included.” In fact Amazon has seen the appeal in physical books, so much so that the company known for its e-readers has actually launched a physical bookstore.