Few homes are filled with books any more. They prefer the E-book or audiobook when they read at all. Which is fine for adults but does not work for kids.
You need to have physical media for your children. They need to have books to page through, chew on and bang on the floor long before they start to read.
You can tell which children are raised with actual books and who isn't rather quickly. And I am not talking about high brow books or classics. Just regular popular fiction works.
My great nephew was excited to join the marines. I bought him the whole DVD set of JAG and he was thrilled. Then I brought him all the marine books by WEB Griffin. He didn’t open a single one and his mother explained that he didn’t really read anything. This generation is lost.
My worries are what do I do with my entire library. As a packrat, I have every book I ever owned from Golden Books up, as well as all the books owned by my mother and grandparents. There’s a 42’ hallway with shelves floor to ceiling on both sides. One side for paperback sized books. One for full sized. The library has a 10’ ceiling and has 8 1/2 bays of shelves for oversized books. The genealogy books are in 4 bookcases upstairs and 4 downstairs. All the books that don’t fit are in boxes in closets.
I grew up reading from babyhood. These books are table stabilizers for uneven legs to this generation. So sad.
Agreed. Any book (with content that is appropriate for children, of course) is a good book. And, like you said, e-books are nice, but there's nothing like holding a physical book.
Ebooks sales are not that great.
The problem isn’t books, it’s publishing.
Guess who owns the publishing houses.
As for self-publishing...
Well, God made editors for a reason.