GMAT Essays (AWA)

Hey Guys,

I am a last minute entry to this forum. Honestly I was going through lot of study material but never bothered checking out if there were any other poor souls like me. So here I am with 1 day to go & writing my first essay. Please do let me know how it sounds & how I can improve myself. I have close to 17hours to go & AWA for the portion I left for last. so here goes:-

The following appeared as part of an article in the book section of a newspaper:

“Currently more and more books are becoming available in electronic form—either free-of-charge on the Internet or for a very low price-per-book on compact disc. Thus literary classics are likely to be read more widely than ever before. People who couldn’t have purchased these works at bookstore prices will now be able to read them for little or no money; similarly, people who find it inconvenient to visit libraries and wait for books to be returned by other patrons will now have access to whatever classic they choose from their home or work computers. This increase in access to literary classics will radically affect the public taste in reading, creating a far more sophisticated and learned reading audience than has ever existed before.”

The invention of a new technology have always been welcomed by people & soon we find innumerable ways to make maximum utilization of it. Technologies such as Compact Disc, Internet have been used extensively by people for various uses. One of the major application of these two technology is in the field of information. Information was earlier transmitted mainly through the printed media & books were a source of information as well as a means of entertainment. All the major literary works were first written on paper & later made available in the electronic form.

The availability of books in the electronic form has greatly helped in making it more widely. The biggest example will be the case of books written by foreign authors. Quite often many of the book stores have majority of books by the country's authors & books by foreign authors are difficult to obtain or priced heavily. Due to this reason books of foreign authors are available to only the few who have proper access in terms of availability & also the money to afford it. This is were the Internet has greatly helped in making sure that every book is made available in a click of the mouse button.

But every invention & new technology has its flaws as well. The Internet & electronic form of books might have made it more readily accessible, but has resulted in losses worth millions to various publishers. The best example will be the famous book series “Harry Potter” by J.K. Rowling. Within hours of worldwide release of the book, electronic forms of the story was available over the Internet. This greatly affected the sales of the book & resulted in huge losses to its publishers. Even though we have strict rules about music & movie piracy there isn't a strong enough rule for the piracy of electronic form of books.

It is important that a lot of thought be put into while putting a check on this kind of piracy. The electronic form of books has definitely made books more accessible & has created an audience for good literary works. It is necessary to identify literary work which can be “open-sourced” or distributed for free without causing any financial losses. There are many writers, bloggers & amateurs who have created magnificent literary contributions which are free for any of its readers to read, copy & distribute. Such an atmosphere not only encourages new writers to make use of this medium to write more but also increases the material available for the audience to read.

Presently there are millions of blogging communities, writers forums which encourage amateur writers to come up with their own short stories, articles etc which are published across various websites for people to read. The authors of such works also receive feedback which helps them t improve themselves & contribute more to the audience. It is essential that we channelize the new technology so that our future generations can read about it!