Books Have Many Futures

by Linton Weeks -

 August 20, 2010
The premise of Lane Smith's new work for children, It’s a Book, is simple: Books are under siege.

On the first page a donkey asks a monkey, "What do you have there?" The monkey replies: "It’s a book."

"How do you scroll down?" the donkey asks. "Do you blog with it?"

Then he asks: "Where’s your mouse? ... Can you make characters fight? ... Can it text? ... Tweet? ... Wi-Fi? ... Can it do this? TOOT!"

The title says it all.
No, the monkey repeatedly replies. "It’s a book."

Smith's book, in stores this month, may be an example of a dying breed. A book, published — and meant to be read — on paper.

People have been talking about "the death of the book" for more than a decade. But recent events suggest the end may be imminent for bound-paper books as we have known them for more than 500 years. Hardbound and paperback books may never totally disappear, but they could become scary scarce — like eight-track tapes, typewriters and wooden tennis rackets.

In July, Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos announced that his customers now buy more digital versions of stories — designed for Amazon's proprietary reading tablet, the Kindle — than they do hardcover books. That is an astonishing fact, Bezos said, "when you consider that we've been selling hardcover books for 15 years, and Kindle books for 33 months."

The MIT futurist Nicholas Negroponte told the Techonomy Conference in early August that the physical, paper-based book is dying rapidly and will soon be replaced as the dominant form. "It’s happening," Negroponte said. "It's not happening in 10 years. It's happening in five years."

Writing about the fact that the behemoth bookstore chain Barnes & Noble has put itself up for sale, The Economist of Aug. 5 noted that the future of books is in digital delivery, not paper-based tomes. "Bricks-and-mortar bookstores look increasingly out-dated, except as venues for leisurely coffee and book signings," according to the magazine. "Whoever ends up owning Barnes & Noble faces a tough task: adapt to the Brave New World, or be consigned to the History section."

Also in August, blogger Peter Cochrane wrote on the business technology site Silicon.com that "books have been an increasingly inconvenient luxury and soon they will be one we can no longer afford." Even The New York Times ran a piece suggesting other uses for poised-to-be-passe books, such as secret storage compartments, artworks or stage props.

So what does all of this "death of books as we know them" talk mean for reading? For writing? For our education system? What exactly is the future of the book?
Much more at npr.