Don't Burn Your Books—Print Is Here to Stay

WSJ ^ | 1/7/13 | NICHOLAS CARR

[Borges]

Lovers of ink and paper, take heart. Reports of the death of the printed book may be exaggerated.

Ever since Amazon introduced its popular Kindle e-reader five years ago, pundits have assumed that the future of book publishing is digital. Opinions about the speed of the shift from page to screen have varied. But the consensus has been that digitization, having had its way with music and photographs and maps, would in due course have its way with books as well. By 2015, one media maven predicted a few years back, traditional books would be gone.

Half a decade into the e-book revolution, though, the prognosis for traditional books is suddenly looking brighter. Hardcover books are displaying surprising resiliency. The growth in e-book sales is slowing markedly. And purchases of e-readers are actually shrinking, as consumers opt instead for multipurpose tablets. It may be that e-books, rather than replacing printed books, will ultimately serve a role more like that of audio books—a complement to traditional reading, not a substitute.

[discostu]

Something by Roger Zelazny. I’m tempted to go for Nine Prices of Amber, but then I need people to memorize the rest of the series. Probably everybody wants to memorize Lord of Light. So I’d probably go for Damnation Alley, might be considered a lesser work, but I’ve always been fond of it.

[RFEngineer]

I often utilize Low-Power Persistent Papyrus High-Resolution Display versions of books, and also often use an e-reader.

[Terry L Smith]

Ah, books!
No battery is required.
No software that continually updates automatically, or has a big blinkie reminding you of such, with cost.
You can always put a REAL bookmark in a place, close the cover, and come back later, open the cover, and not wait for the reader to initialize.
If you drop it, it is never broken.
You may still acquire an author of choice’s autograph, and not one that has been programmed into the interface.
There are NO advertisements to interrupt your reading pleasure.
You cannot dog-ear an electronic page, no matter how you try!
A crumb of food, or drop of drink, might well end your electronic reading pleasure, but not print, it just gains character.
You cannot actually ‘highlight’ pages in an electronic book, as you may in print.
You can ALWAYS find a buyer for a print book, whereas electronic viewing material is never YOUR’S to sell!
Printed books can become heirlooms.

“Whats wi’d d’is guy an’ his books???”

Let’s just say that, I have enough to keep me going, for instance:
1. All the ‘Dirty harry’ adventures in paperback.
2. The continually growing collection of one Ms. Kim Harrison’s ‘Hollows’ adventures, in both hardback and paperback.
3. Most of Robert E. Howard’s works.
4. All of Ian Fleming’s works, and a few of the wanna-be’s, as well.
5. Works of Zane Grey.
6. Works of Rex Stout.
7. Works of Robert B. Parker.
8. The few works in print concerning a certain short-stutured Los Angeles Homicide lieutenant, with a very old car.

I have my “have read” and “yet to read” bookshelves, don’t worry!

[latina4dubya]

first for me would be Les Miserables... however, my son knows it inside out, so that frees me to memorize another favorite book or two—Paul’s Letter to the Philippians (NIV) and The Odyssey—in the original Greek, if i could...

[firebrand]

The higher profits from the digital books have made print books more feasible economically. Production costs were killing them before the e-book came along.

I’ve never even touched an e-book device. Let them continue to subsidize my hardcovers and stay away from me.

[latina4dubya]

then i would tackle the Psalms in Hebrew... and the Aeneid in Latin—that would probably be the easiest after Philippians...

[Mad Dawgg]

If I were designing a new publishing Company I would start with eBooks! But I would also "PRINT" High quality hardbacks.

Why? Because my reading habit is so engrained into me that I cannot now store ALL of the books I read. (I still have just about every hard copy book I've ever owned and I've run out of room.) That is why I love me Kindle Fire (But I think I would have been happier with just a plain Kindle the fire is just a little uncomfortable to hold with just one hand)

So now I go crazy with eBooks BUT when I run across a book I really Like I would love to have a nice leather bound copy with archival quality paper and gilt edging and a sewn in silk book mark and would be willing to pay premium for such. But I refuse to pay the ridiculous prices for a new standard Hardback being they are so poorly manufactured now. I wait till I can find them in the bargain bins or remaindered tables. And I hate paperbacks especially TRADE paperbacks which are just an excuse to get more money for a paperback copy.

[tnlibertarian]

Here's an experiment any reader can do: when you're having a bad day go to a bookstore, on another bad day click on Amazon.

I don't know. I have yet to run into a stinky, liberal hippy when I click 'check out' at Amazon.

[discostu]

You apparently don’t get the “ooooooh books I can buy” high. Hippies can’t touch it.

[Signalman]

I haven’t read a “real book” since I got my Kindle Keyboard last year.

And in my area (southern Calif.) bookstores are going out of business in droves.

[discostu]

They’ve certainly made the competition stiffer. But I just don’t want an e-book, they have no draw to me. So much of what makes books awesome to me is other than the content. I love to see, smell them, be in a room filled with them. No e-book can do that. If you’re all about the content I suppose e-books are the path, but there’s ritual to books for me.

[pnz1]

I love e-books for traveling and being on the go especially. So much easier than carrying a ton of reading material with me everywhere. I tend to use my Bible on the Kindle a lot too. I still love my actual books though. There’s a lot of books I still buy and keep on my bookshelf. Amazon has a ton of free books/apps and often for the “fluff” reads I tend to just do the e-book thing.

[x]

He's right about the short term.

How things will look when we are all gone is another matter, that's harder to speculate about.

If civilization lasts, CD's will be long gone, replaced by something else -- if they haven't already been.

Books will still be around, but as quaint and old-timey relics.

Maybe like sheet music or player piano rolls -- still around but not selling in anything like the numbers it did earlier.

[circlecity]

"That is why lawyersgo to Lexis and Westlaw before hard copy."

Westlaw (which I use everyday) is sophisticated boolean search software and has capabilities way, way beyond anything kindle, nook or the like has. Further, finding margin notes or going back and forth between pages to find a passage you remember is much more tedious in the typical e-reader than with paper and cardboard. But, to each his own. Use whatever works for you.

[familyop]

“Print is here to stay,” unless we want all publicly available knowledge to disappear in a disaster (e.g., EMP strikes).

[Dr. Sivana]

Further, finding margin notes or going back and forth between pages to find a passage you remember is much more tedious in the typical e-reader than with paper and cardboard.But, to each his own. Use whatever works for you.

I wasn't comparing reference books on a Kindle to hard copy, but digital reference books versus hard copy. It would be trivial for Amazon to add equally sophisticated boolean searches, and such readers may already exist. Obviously, for those who write notes in the margin, no current pad or reader renders that functionality very well. I use a desktop for most of my e-reading, and an iPod Touch for the rest. The ultimate reference book is the Holy Bible. I can search my preferred version on DRBO.ORG very easily, though for straight reading I prefer a hard copy, and I don't see myself carrying an iPad into Mass any time soon to replace the Missal, though good software for that purpose already exists. For those who worry about digital copies being "corrected" by PC forces, just save you old PDF copy to a thumb drive, label it, and put it away.

[Some Fat Guy in L.A.]

ereaders give me a headache, print books don’t.