Funny thing about all these articles about the death of print books (in this case, specifically paperbacks). They seem to be wringing their hands at some random, unstoppable force of the universe. They blame "e-book sales," as if that was an unpredictable, mysterious, and somewhat sinister circumstance.
Another way you could put it is, "People have stopped buying paperbacks." Or, if you want to be a bit more daring with your assertions, "People prefer buying e-books to paperbacks."
It's not some invisible hand of fate that spells the death of paperbacks. It is the purchasing preferences of readers. No one is forcing us to buy paperbacks or e-books; within reason, you have the power to buy whatever you want.
If you choose an e-book over a paperback, you probably have a pretty good reason for it. You might like the immediacy of buying an e-book, versus driving all the way to the store (or ordering it online and waiting for it to show up). You might like the fact that e-books are a searchable text. Or that e-books take up zero shelf space, such that you can carry your entire library in your pocket.
Bemoaning the death of the paperback misses the point. If people don't want to buy paperbacks, if they prefer to buy e-books, then that is what they are going to do. Obviously e-books have a lot of appeal that paperbacks don't. (Enough appeal to outweigh the fact that e-books, unlike paperbacks, have no resale value, and cannot be bought for cheap on the secondary market.)
There are a lot of conspiracy theories about the publishing industry and e-books. One of them is voiced in this article: the publishing industry wants to kill the paperback because it doesn't make them as much money as the e-book. But this theory overlooks the fact that people only buy e-books because they like them better.
It's time for booksellers and publishers to stop pointing fingers, start understanding why people prefer e-books, and find better ways to adapt.
Image courtesy Flickr/Salem (MA) Public Library
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