A working assumption that half of all book sales would soon be digital circulated during a meeting at one of the major publishing houses about ten years ago. This is the kind of meeting where confident predictions are made in carpeted conference rooms. E-readers were ubiquitous. Amazon was changing the industry’s regulations. According to this reasoning, the paperback was a format that was ready to be retired. The meeting took place. These forecasts were made. Apparently, the memo did not reach the physical book.
Print books are more than just enduring. They are flourishing in a number of significant ways, and the publishing industry has had to subtly lower its expectations after years of preparing for a different result. One of Amazon’s own best-selling authors recently signed a deal with a traditional publisher for physical-only distribution. It’s worth taking a moment to consider that detail. Demand for printed copies of books that were first published on its own platform is currently being seen by Amazon, the company that may have done more than anyone to promote digital reading. There has been a change.
It’s possible that screens themselves started the change. Nowadays, the majority of smartphone, laptop, and tablet owners look at their devices for five to six hours every day. According to medical advice from organizations like the Mayo Clinic, screen time should not exceed two hours per day. For the majority of working adults, this amount is practically impossible to meet before noon. The eyes become weary. Then comes the head. And the thought of sitting down to read from yet another glowing rectangle has become much less appealing after a day spent navigating emails, video calls, and the low-grade hum of social media. Blue light doesn’t come from a physical book. Notifications don’t buzz through it. It does nothing but sit there and wait for you to open it.
The issue of retention is another. A growing number of studies indicate that readers absorb and retain information better when they come across it on a printed page rather than on a screen, though the research on this topic is still developing and not entirely settled. Scrolling doesn’t seem to create the same kind of mental anchoring that reading physically does. Before they could explain why, readers who have transitioned back from digital to print frequently report seeing this difference. They describe reaching back through a Kindle page to find something they were certain they had just read, the words slipping away in a way they wouldn’t have from a paperback.
Additionally, there seems to be something noteworthy taking place in the actual locations where books are traded and sold. In ways that seem to have surprised even their owners, used bookstores—which for a while appeared to be a pleasantly stubborn anachronism—have been attracting people back. The slight randomness of it, the way a spine grabs your attention for no apparent reason, and the dialogue a worn cover initiates before you’ve even read a word are all unique aspects of perusing a shelf of used books. A digital storefront does not offer that experience, and for some readers, the lack of it turns out to be quite significant.
Around the same time that the digital predictions were not coming true, the publishing industry also noticed something else. Physical books needed to be beautiful things in and of themselves if they were to compete in the era of gorgeous screens. Over the past ten years, print book design has become noticeably more thoughtful. Uncoated paper stocks, embossed covers, spot varnish finishes, and ribbon bookmarks in hardcovers—all of which were previously thought to be superfluous embellishments—are just a few examples. Publishers started making investments in the product rather than just the content, viewing the book as a valuable asset. The result is a bookshelf that many people genuinely want others to see, though it’s difficult to determine how much of the print revival they caused versus reflected.
This has a social component that is rarely included in industry analysis but most likely ought to be. Giving someone a book is more effective than giving them an e-book. There isn’t any weight. One cannot write the inscription. The next reader won’t be able to see the dog-eared pages that accumulate as proof of where you stopped and started. For many readers, the traces left by the people who have held a physical book are part of what makes it meaningful. Nigel Newton of Bloomsbury once said that it doesn’t matter from a business standpoint whether a customer purchases an ebook or a print book; it’s still a sale. However, the two experiences are not at all the same for the reader, and it appears that an increasing number of people have independently reached that conclusion.
Whether this is a long-term rebalancing or something more brittle is still up for debate. Affordability, portability, and the capacity to store hundreds of books on a single device are some of the genuine benefits of digital reading that haven’t gone away. These benefits will remain important, particularly for readers in areas where new physical books are costly or difficult to locate. However, the simple assumption that digital would just take the place of print—that the screen would automatically prevail because it was more modern and practical—has not held. The actual book still exists.
I am still being read. Long after the narrative has been forgotten, they are still given as gifts, signed by writers, passed between friends, and stored on shelves. It seems as though those who foresaw its demise were measuring the wrong things all along.
Alyssa Bennett as editor at vclib.org, oversees editorial coverage of literary criticism, cultural analysis, political commentary. Alyssa brings rigorous research discipline, in-depth knowledge, experience, and an approachable editorial voice to subjects that most readers find thought-provoking and culturally significant. Her career spans the intersection of literary journalism, political writing, and educational publishing.