“From Papyrus to Pixels” is an essay on the future of the book, published in the Economist. It can be read either as a book or as a papyrus. One could also listen to it.
This is why paper books aren’t likely to go the way of the great auk in the foreseeable future.
One: The growth rate of e-books has recently slowed in many markets, including America and Britain. Sales of e-readers, the most popular of which is the Kindle, are in decline.
Two: A print book is a competitive technology. It’s portable. It’s hard to break. It has high-resolution pages and a long battery life to boot.
Three: Unlike a CD, whose contents can be extracted in a jiffy, converting a paper book to an e-book, page by page, is time-consuming. A book is, therefore, far less likely to fall prey to piracy.
Four: The past decade has seen the decline of physical bookshops, not books themselves. In 2013, around 1.4 million International Standard Book Numbers (or ISBN) were issued, up from around 8,100 in 1960.
Five: Before the 19th century, it was common for writers to publish themselves. Later, when publishing became a mass-market business, the self-published came to be seen as kooks or egotists and were ignored. Today, self-publishing has made a comeback.
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