I hardly know how to start this one but here goes: books are dead.
In November 2006 I started writing a book about the end of paper books. I called it The Library of Death and I had no difficulty finding an agent. After all, somebody was going to write the first book about the end of paper books and the first one to hit the shops was bound to sell on the back of all the publicity the ebooks would get.
Not even the indestructable Sexton Blake can stop the death of paper books. Here he is in 1929, confronting Miss Death.
When I started to write it you couldn’t buy an ebook in the UK. The Sony reader was only avaliable in America and Japan. Nobody took what I said seriously. I interviewed plenty of people and they all said that ebooks would never take off and that people would always prefer paper books. A futurologist from New York thought that it would take fifty years for paper to die out. Richard Joseph, of Shepperds Guide, said he thought that in the future paper books would be more in demand, not less. Incredibly, all of them said that the readers were too expensive or that they would hurt your eyes or that the battery would run out. Various other people ‘hoped’ that paper would always be appreciated and waxed more or less lyrical about the texture of the experience, the intimacy of the process and the cultural memory of the medium. Whoo hoo.
Interestingly the only person who agreed with me was not a book man. He was a record man. He’d seen vinyl go from all there was to a barely remembered irrelevancy in just twenty years and he knew precisely what I was talking about.
The agent sent it off in November 2007 and pretty soon it was clear that it was ‘thanks but no thanks’. Several publishers said that they simply didn’t agree, as if their personal opinions were enough to prevent the firm making money and a few simply didn’t like the style, which was fair enough. The first book about the end of paper books, and all the juicy publicity that will go with it is still up for grabs, by the way.
Because I was right. Books are dead. They’re still with us but the writing is on the silicon wall. Today’s teenagers choose screens over paper all day every day for the simple reason that it’s better. Great big clunking text books and guide books and how-to books and reference books and, yes, novels are an embarrassement next to a wafer thin colour reader linked up to the internet.
Not enough bodies in second hand bookshops is causing hundreds to close down each year. Will anybody collect books a few decades from now?
I spend thousands a year on lovely old books and I’m not going to stop doing that; indeed, the whole point of this blog is to encourage you to do the same. Unfortunately I suspect that soon books will be just another cultural artefact like sugar tongs, teapots or doorknobs. Collecting them will appeal to a tiny minority and seem ludicrous to the other six billion because paper books will quickly lose their status once the readers really take off.
And it gives me no pleasure to say “I was right,” even though I was right. I had 2020 as the absolute last date for paper books being the norm and everything is right on track. Just two dominos are yet to fall. The first is the price of readers, which will soon fall rapidly, in the same way that electronic calculators cost the earth when launched and eventually became essentially free. The second is what nobody else has realised yet – except me and the record man. It is this: It isn’t up to you.
Borders has gone and Amazon report that the sale of ebooks is fast catching up with that of those old, heavy, paper versions.
Vinyl wasn’t broke, in the same way that paper books are perfectly adequate now, and have been for 500 years. There is no reason for anyone to switch to another technology unless they’re forced to do so. Record companies got together and simply began to limit the supply of vinyl. If you wanted to hear the songs, you had to buy the CD – which was on special offer, sir, with two extra tracks, madam, and a free booklet to boot. Soon publishers will begin to limit the supply of paper books and to make them more expensive ( the trees! the ink! the oil!) More and more people will give up and switch to a screen. If you don’t believe me, ask yourself this question. When was the last time you bought a record?
Books are dead.
Am I right? I’ll have more to say on this next week, but in the meantime I’d like to hear your thoughts. Will books continue to be collected or will they vanish from the public’s conciousness as they fade away?
There are no copies of the first item for sale on the net at the moment.
R T Campbell’s excellent ‘Bodies In a Bookshop’ is here. They are mainly re-issues.
‘Death Of A Bookseller’ is also a brilliant read. You can find one here.
If you’re right about this, then huge sadness radiates. I’m 25, unconvinced by an e-reader experience (perverse!), and must report to thee that my observations and eavesdroppings reveal books are gaining vogue even among iThing zealots. There is a little technological revolt brewing, mesniffs. Wasn’t there a piece in the Guardian Guide recently about bookness? Books are cool (timelessly so)… Shelves are cool, too. Besides, shelves need books, and rooms need shelves!
Love your blog! I’m way out west in California but my feelings about the American culture are similar to yours about the British culture. Full disclosure first, I’m a musician and have gone fully digital with both making music and listening to it. Everything is on my ipod. But with books I refuse and shall refuse till the day I die. They are a perfect technology already. At a Barnes and Noble in My town they have a booth that sells E readers right next to the stacks of actual books! I asked an employee if they worried they were selling their own job out of existence! He smiled and said nothing. I’m a bit older but think that my generation has to be willing to share our love of real physical books and that yes it is cooler to read than it is to text something. About the comparison with vinyl records, There are more vinyl records sold now than ten years ago! They have become collectors items. Perhaps that’s where books are headed. Don’t forget the second hand markets as well. Billions of used books still are on this planet and will be as long as they are taken care of.
Thanks for your time,
Sean
I buy records all the time. New ones, too – it’s easier now than it was five, ten years ago. Sure, they’re an incredibly minority pursuit, but they ain’t dead, 20 years after the last rites have been read.
This may seem like nit-picking, but I feel it’s an important distinction. Records aren’t dead the way VHS, Laserdisk, Betamax and HDDVD are dead.
The outlook for books is then rather bleak – “books are very poorly,” or “books will decline massively in popularity” maybe. But not dead.
Mr Lines –
As a collector your interest in a book is with its material aspect: the condition of the cover, the date of publication, the freshness of the illustrations.
When paper and ink is replaced by the touch-screen or website, how will the written word as a purely intellectual artifice be affected? What shape will those words take, how will it be assembled, how will the (possibly defunct) role of ‘novelist’ distinguish between (possibly equally defunct) categories such as ‘genre’ to practice their craft? What will a world be like that does not have a niche set aside for those whose trade is to create something that is both an intellectual and a material object? These are for me the real questions that this change in format pose.
A piece of plastic with words on the screen doesn’t outrage me in itself – if I had the cash I’d get me an iphone. What really freaks me out is the idea that the artistry of those pixelated words may yet become defunct as what we read is no longer written by people, but ‘rendered’ to order. To paraphrase, there may soon be an App for that. That would be scary.
Death of a Bookseller is the best bibliomystery I have read. Booked to Die is good but many yards behind. Knock or Ring is pretty good. What I am looking for is a bibliomystery set at a rock star’s vast mansion with a religious cult involved and a detective out of Poe via Doyle via Chancer with a touch of pretentiousness from Eco or even Borges but no darstardly magic realism. Not much to ask. Chris Pettit could do it.