Future of the Book Industry

My opinion on the digital-vs.-traditional debate is that more variety is always good. What I think we’re looking at right now is the experimental phase of this development— we’ve just acquired the ability to do something completely different, and I think we’ll have to go through a period of “Look, look, I can make an e-reader do this!” before people will finally settle down and decide what, exactly, they want their reading devices to do. At which point I think we can expect to see a wide spectrum of options ranging from books, which will probably become something more akin to luxury commodities, similar to how fountain pens are today— this is good because it means leather binding and gold-leaf pages and dusty old bookshops run by a man with too many cats who doesn’t actually want to sell you anything— to some new evolution of the kindle that does everything you could possibly imagine. But the best option on the market will probably be some synthesis of the two mediums— maybe an object which is roughly the size and shape of a book, with pages that actually turn, but the paper is electronic and nearly indestructible, does not warp when it gets wet, and it interacts with you via a touchscreen embedded in every page. That would be my ideal scenario. What actually happens will probably be better.