Future of the Book

Introduction

The competition between traditional books and e-books for readers' attention can generate strong feelings. Scottish bookstore owner Shaun Bythell expressed his by destroying an Amazon Kindle e-reader with a shotgun and mounting it on a plaque in his shop in 2017. (Getty Images/Jeff J. Mitchell)

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Overview

Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens' breakout novel, sold more than 1.8 million print copies last year, more than any other adult fiction or nonfiction book.1 But its sales power was not limited to the hardcover or paperback book. Millions of copies were sold in audiobook, CD and e-book formats.2

Readers could buy it in print from Amazon and wait a day or two for delivery, or get it immediately for the Amazon Kindle e-reader; as an audiobook through Audible, Google Play or Apple Books; from Kobo, or nearly any book retailer. And those who do not have days to commit to reading the full book can even buy a two-hour summary from Audible.3

Actor Tom Stechschulte narrates an audiobook version of the novel Apache Storm by Jason Manning. Audiobooks are a growing part of the book publishing industry. (AP Photo/Tina Fineberg)

The proliferation of nonprint book formats is a far cry from 1993, when Peter James published his novel Host on a floppy disk. Then, the idea of reading a book on a screen was so foreign, James was skewered. “I was on [NBC's] ‘Today’ accused of killing the novel,” he said. After the book's release, one reporter even took a computer and generator to the beach to show the impractical nature of a digital book. James, however, sensed that once the technology was perfected, digital books would no longer seem outlandish.4

It took another 15 years for digitized books to take off the way James predicted, and only after the format became portable and convenient. In 2019, one-quarter of U.S. adults reported reading an e-book at some point in the past year, up from 17 percent in 2011.5 Today, e-books are so widely read that The New York Times bestseller list can be sorted both by print-only sales and combined print and e-book purchases.

But it is not just the e-book that has gained popularity — and it may even be losing ground to other formats. Smartphone apps publishing original content have thousands of subscribers. Audiobooks are also rising, so much so that in the spring of 2019, Lucasfilm announced that it would release a new Star Wars novel only in audio format.6

Today's digital-first, smartphone-addicted society is reshaping how books are consumed. This revolution is forcing publishing companies and retailers to reconsider their business models and ask whether they are providing the right content in the right format to keep consumers buying books. The shift from print to e-book, audio format or a mix of the three has implications for readers and society that extend to questions about how people learn and what happens to the brain as reading becomes digitized.

Since Johannes Gutenberg invented Europe's first printing press in 1439, the traditional, printed book has been king. Perfecting the printing press in ways that allowed for faster and cheaper production of increasingly portable books — along with rising literacy in the late 1800s and early 1900s — helped book-reading spread from a pastime reserved for the wealthy to a leisure activity for nearly anyone with spare change looking for entertainment.

Yet even as the popularity of books increased, each new technology has invited predictions about the demise of print. In 1894, Scribner's Magazine published an article postulating that audio might kill the book. Printing, the article asserted, was “threatened with death by the various devices for registering sound which have lately been invented, and which little by little will go on to perfection.”7 More than a century later, in 2009, two years after the release of the Kindle, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos predicted that “no technology, not even one as elegant as the book, lasts forever.”8

Even so, print books remain a massive industry in the United States. In 2018, book publishers earned $26 billion in revenue, and print made up $22.6 billion of it, or 87 percent, according to the Association of American Publishers (AAP), the publishing industry's trade association.9 Though there are year-to-year fluctuations, industry revenue has remained relatively flat since 2006, when it hit $28.6 billion, a $3.9 billion increase over the 2000 level.10

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After the Kindle was released, some reading shifted to digital consumption. Between 2008 and 2010, e-book sales jumped 1,260 percent.11 That growth was in part driven by the price of e-books, which sold for around $9.99 until allegations of a price-fixing scheme led to an antitrust lawsuit that resulted in publishers setting a suggested price and retailers ultimately choosing how much to sell the book for.

“Overnight, in 2010, the publishers raised e-book prices from $9.99 to $14.99 for new-release books,” says Andrew Albanese, a senior writer and features editor at Publishers Weekly, a magazine that tracks the industry. What followed was “a decline in e-book sales for major publishers that continues today, and the absurd situation in which consumers on Amazon can often buy new-release hardcover books for less than the e-book edition,” Albanese says.

Yet some industry experts say e-book readership might be underreported because of where people get their content and how that data is collected.

“People reading digitally has grown, it's just happening in places where it's not as evident,” says Jane Friedman, a publishing consultant. Younger people read on fan fiction sites or through other digital means that give them access to unknown and up-and-coming writers. A growing number of apps are being released that can serialize existing or original books. These readers are not accounted for in traditional revenue or readership statistics.

Albanese agrees that this unreported or incomplete data might tell a completely different story. “Self-published and Amazon-published books make up a large and growing slice of the reading pie, although it's hard to say exactly how much since Amazon doesn't share its data,” he says.

According to Albanese, Amazon reported that authors publishing works within Kindle Unlimited, the e-reader's subscription service, earned $300 million in royalties in 2019, a $40 million increase from the prior year. “This is all digital reading, and it is serious competition for a reader's attention,” Albanese says.

There is a distinct divide in what readers prefer to consume digitally versus in print. According to Nielsen Book, a data firm that analyzes retail book sales, nature, cooking and children's books do well in print, while crime, romance and thrillers are preferred by those using e-readers.12

Albanese says it is difficult to make the case that any genre is truly thriving in print, except for perhaps young adult and children's books. “General fiction sales have been in decline for years, especially in the genres like sci-fi and romance, with the assumption … that those readers are moving to e-books,” he says. Recently, political books on President Trump and former first lady Michelle Obama's memoir Becoming have helped overall print sales, but their impact is largely trailing off, says Albanese.

Audiobooks are currently having their own heyday. Data from the Pew Research Center, a Washington research organization, reveals growth in the number of Americans listening to audiobooks, from 14 percent of those surveyed in 2016 to 20 percent by 2019.13

Over the past decade, audiobooks have experienced double-digit growth almost every year. Although digitally downloaded and CD audiobook sales still pale in comparison to print books and e-books, they are rapidly growing. According to the AAP, the number of downloaded audiobooks grew 36.4 percent between the first half of 2017 and the first half of 2018. In the same period, downloads of e-books declined by 5 percent, and sales of hardcover and paperback books experienced only single-digit growth.14

“Audio publishing continues its upward trajectory. Seven consecutive years of double-digit growth is truly extraordinary,” said Chris Lynch, president and publisher at Simon & Schuster Audio. “More audiobooks are being produced and more people are listening than ever.”15

The textbook market remains somewhat of an outlier. Elementary, middle and high schools have taken only halting steps to move to digital course materials because of the cost and the persistent “homework gap,” the number of students in primarily rural, low-income or minority communities who lack home access to broadband internet.

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Higher education publishers have slowly shifted more of their content online to bring down the cost and eliminate the print resale market for college textbooks. And developments in the industry over the past year might accelerate the move to digital. In July 2019, Pearson, the world's biggest producer of educational materials, announced it would adopt a digital-first publishing model for its college and university materials. All new editions of its textbooks will be released first in digital form, allowing for near-instant updates as the need arises.16

Cengage, another major player in the textbook market, introduced an unlimited digital textbook subscription for college students in 2017. It limits users to the textbooks Cengage publishes, but that platform could be expanded if a pending merger with McGraw-Hill is completed.17

(SAGE Publishing, which publishes CQ Researcher, also publishes higher education textbooks.)

Despite these trends, the future of the book might be dictated simply by how much individuals read — or if they read. Pew reports that nearly three-quarters of all adults in the United States read a book in some format during the past 12 months, with 65 percent choosing a print book. On average, Americans read 12 books per year, a number largely unchanged since Pew started gathering readership data in 2011.18

However, over the wider time frame of the past few decades, reading has been in decline. Statistics from Pew and Gallup indicate that between 1978 and 2014, the share of U.S. adults who had not read a single book over the course of a year tripled. The federal government's Bureau of Labor Statistics similarly found that the number of individuals reading for pleasure fell 30 percent from 2004 to 2018.19 That decrease has corresponded with an increase in the amount of time spent watching television. In 2018, Americans ages 15 and older spent an average of 2.84 hours per day watching television, compared to a daily average of about 15 minutes reading for pleasure.20

Literary researcher Maryanne Wolf links some of this leisure reading drop-off to the overwhelming amount of information Americans consume each day. “The reality at this point is that we have become so inundated with information that the average person in the United States now reads daily the same number of words as is found in many a novel,” she wrote.21

Wolf cautioned that because this reading is rarely continuous, there is worry among writers “that the novel, which requires and rewards a special form of sustained reading, will be ‘sidelined’ by the ever-increasing barrage of words we feel compelled to consume daily.” According to Wolf and other researchers, when people read digitally, they tend to skim, simplify and triage the information, which might have a lasting effect on how they learn.22

While books have survived the advent of radio, film, television and the internet, their future — what they look like, who reads them, who sells them, and who writes them — remains uncertain.

As publishers, scholars, writers and readers ponder where the book world is heading, here are some of the questions they are considering:

Do e-books still pose a serious threat to print books?

According to data from the Pew Research Center, in the 12 months preceding a recent survey, 37 percent of Americans read only print books, 28 percent read in digital and print formats and 7 percent read only digital books.23

“Print continues to be the king,” says John McKay, senior vice president of communications for the AAP.

That is not quite what analysts predicted when Amazon introduced the Kindle in 2007, making e-books more widely accessible. Technology experts, researchers and educators assumed that young digital natives would flock to the e-book. In reality, young Americans are more likely than older adults to read a print book. Pew found that 74 percent of people ages 18 to 29 read a physical book over the past year, higher than the 59 percent of those ages 50 to 64 and 63 percent of those ages 65 and older.24

“It seems young adults are glued to their devices, but when it comes to the new John Green [novel], they prefer print,” says Albanese of Publishers Weekly.

Last year, e-books accounted for around 20 percent of book sales and print made up about 80 percent. Not long ago, “you would have thought those numbers would have been reversed,” said Albanese.25

Meryl Halls, managing director at the Booksellers Association of the United Kingdom and Ireland, a trade group promoting retail bookselling, said e-book sales flattened in part because “the physical object is very appealing.” Readers like keeping a record of their reading and appreciate the book covers that have become almost works of art themselves. And, she added, “it's harder to have an emotional relationship with what you're reading if it's on an e-reader.”26

Formatting is frequently cited as a reason e-books no longer pose the threat they once did to print books. E-books are often just a PDF file of a printed book, presented on an e-reader. This is not always conducive to books that require special formatting and characters to adequately convey the author's message. Others point to the nostalgia of a book, ease of sharing or gifting, shelf life and the opportunity to physically mark the book to note important passages or information.27

A passenger reads a Kindle on a flight to Myanmar in 2016. Initial predictions that e-books would come to dominate book sales have not been borne out. (Getty Images/EyesWideOpen)

Friedman, the publishing consultant, offers another reason for flat e-book sales: the high price of those released by traditional publishers.28 The pricing is in part driven by a 2012 lawsuit filed by the U.S. Justice Department against Apple and five major publishing houses: Simon & Schuster, Penguin, HarperCollins, Hachette and Macmillan. In U.S. v. Apple, the government accused the defendants of collaborating to fix book prices to better compete with Amazon.

At the time, Amazon had a stranglehold on the e-book market and set its prices around $9.99 per book. Apple sought to challenge Amazon's market dominance through its application, Apple Books, but needed to set a price around $14.99 for profitability. To make the higher price feasible, Apple entered into a deal with the five publishing houses in which they agreed to sign onto the Apple pricing model and use those same minimum prices anywhere the publisher sold e-books, essentially forcing Amazon to raise its prices to $14.99.29 In turn, e-book sales dropped as readers turned to print books, which are often heavily discounted on Amazon.

But Caleb Mason, the founder of Publerati, a literary fiction publisher based in Maine, does not believe that pricing or nostalgia will keep print books alive in the long term. He points to products that appeared to have staying power but met their demise when new actors entered the scene.

“It's similar to the way the old 35mm photo industry was disrupted by the unanticipated likes of Apple and Facebook,” he says. “Just ask anyone who worked at Kodak, which enjoyed 90 percent global film and market share in the last century.”

Mason's belief that nontraditional publishers will spur the e-book market speaks to a concern among many in the industry: Despite data indicating a leveling off of e-book reading, no one can truly document its market reach. This is because many authors self-publish through Amazon, which does not report its e-book sales data to any major industry data source. Further, e-books published on smartphone apps, fan fiction sites and other digital platforms go uncounted.

“The statistics on average e-book sales are deceptive,” says Friedman. “People reading digitally has grown, it's just happening in places where it's not as evident.”

Albanese agrees. “It's the e-books not from traditional publishers that are the biggest threat,” he says. “Self-published and Amazon-published books make up a large and growing slice of the reading pie, although it's hard to say exactly how much since Amazon doesn't share its data.”

Does it matter cognitively if people are reading fewer print books?

Since electronic text became a growing part of everyday life, researchers have been investigating how reading on a screen affects an individual's overall health and reading comprehension and whether the benefits of screen reading outweigh possible drawbacks.

Author J.D. Salinger's heirs allowed his works to be sold as e-books only after a reader wrote that her physical disability made reading print books difficult. (Getty Images/Bettmann)

E-books have the advantage of malleability, which is useful for those with impaired vision or other physical health challenges. According to the family of renowned author J.D. Salinger, he hated the internet and electronic books, preferring to read in print form. After his death in 2010, Salinger's family resisted allowing his books to be sold in e-book format. However, a letter to the estate from a woman who had a physical disability that made reading print books difficult convinced Salinger's son to allow his father's books to be converted into e-books.

Making Salinger's books accessible to a new generation of readers who prefer electronic devices and to those unable to read physical books because of health conditions “is a very exciting development, and totally in keeping with his wishes even if he greatly preferred the full tactile experience of a physical book,” the writer's son, Matt Salinger, said. “Would he prefer and encourage readers to stick with the printed books? Absolutely. But not exclusively if it means some not being able to read him at all.”30

In addition to the physical adaptations an e-book allows, a growing body of research is investigating the difference in comprehension between reading print and digital books. Some studies find that those reading electronically are more easily distracted, which affects understanding and information gathering, while others have found a benefit to digital reading for certain individuals.

In a 2013 study by Norwegian scholar Anne Mangen and two colleagues, students were asked to read a book either in paperback or on a Kindle. The study found that students who read the print book could reconstruct the story's plot, in chronological order, better than those who used an e-book. The scholars believe this was caused not only by the tendency of screen readers to skim the text but also because an e-book lacks physical pages, and this make it harder for a reader to remember where information appeared. Such studies appear to indicate that readers who rely primarily on screens might lose or fail to develop the analytical skills gained from the more immersive experience of a print book.31

In another study, researchers from Spain and Israel determined that not only does print-based reading result in better comprehension, that advantage has been growing over the past two decades as more reading moves to electronic devices. The researchers admit that complete avoidance of reading on digital devices is probably unrealistic, but note that “ignoring the evidence of a robust screen inferiority … could prevent readers from fully benefiting from their reading comprehension abilities and keep children from developing these skills in the first place.”32

Adriana Bus, a professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands, does not agree that digital text is always a hindrance to learning. She studied more than 400 kindergarteners and the effect on comprehension of e-books with animation and sound. In her study, children better understood the story and learned more vocabulary from an e-book than a print book. “For young children, written language is often difficult, but animated pictures can help them understand more difficult parts of the text,” said Bus.33

Similar studies found that enhanced e-books could help literacy, but also limit adult-child reading interactions that are critical for language development.34

Some research indicates that e-books could improve comprehension for certain groups of readers, including those with dyslexia. A 2013 study found that when the e-reader text is manipulated to display only a few words on a line, some individuals with dyslexia, specifically those with visual attention problems, increase their comprehension.35

However, that same study, and another published in 2019, said that for other adults with dyslexia, e-readers may actually harm comprehension. When reading an e-book, dyslexic adults were often outperformed by other readers in comprehension tasks. But when given a printed book, those with dyslexia performed as well as, and sometimes better than, non-dyslexic university students on certain comprehension tasks. “Therefore,” the study concluded, “digital reading devices might not always be advantageous to them.”36

A study by University of Maryland researchers Lauren M. Singer Trakhman and Patricia A. Alexander concluded that while the non-dyslexic undergraduates studied could summarize the main idea of the text, those reading digitally did not grasp other relevant information as well as those reading printed text.37

Yet in another of their studies, Trakhman and Alexander wrote: “Reading in print or digital form should not be a horse race question. One medium will not and should not be regarded as routinely better for comprehension…. Both mediums appear to have a place in literacy and in learning that must be more fully appreciated.”38

Will small presses and self-publishing come to dominate the industry?

One of the barriers to small presses attaining a larger market share is that the major publishing houses tightly control much of the access to distribution. “The Big Five certainly have more marketing clout and spend a lot more money getting their titles in front of people, especially when you consider that many of them have movie and television divisions, so books are promoted on multiple powerful platforms,” says Jim Barnes, editor and awards director at Independent Publisher Magazine.

According to Friedman, the publishing consultant, small presses are in the worst position in the industry because they do not have much leverage with Amazon and other major retailers that might give them better terms or help with marketing and distribution. In addition, the small presses are not attracting blockbuster books, sometimes because small publishers do not have the prestige and clout of their larger counterparts, and other times because they cannot pay as much.

Albanese of Publishers Weekly says complete domination of the industry by small presses or independent publishers “would defy the laws of economics.” While self-published authors are certainly taking a bigger share of readers, “they are largely doing that through Amazon, which in addition to controlling the retail platform is effectively a major publisher, too,” Albanese says.

It is difficult to gauge how much independent presses and self-publishing are growing, and what impact they are having on the Big Five publishing houses, because of how the data are controlled and reported.

The most widely used cross-publisher data comes from Bowker, which provides statistics on the number of books to which it provides an International Standard Book Number, or ISBN. However, if the author decides not to apply for an ISBN, as is the case with many self-published titles, that book does not get counted. And Amazon does not report all its sales information to industry data outlets.

The data are “woefully lacking,” says Angela Bole, CEO of the Independent Book Publishers Association, because the most reliable tracking groups are not able to count all of the independently sold books or self-published books. “It's very hard to see into all the pockets,” she says.

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Nevertheless, small presses and self-published authors can sometimes compete with the Big Five in niche areas, according to Friedman. Already in some genres, such as romance, she says that self-publishing sales and revenue are probably greater than that of the Big Five.

“Wherever there was a big traditional publisher making mass market paperback books, those sales are declining so fast because e-books are now the preferred method of consumption,” Friedman says. While self-publishers can charge 99 cents per book, traditional publishers cannot go that low because of their higher operating costs.

Albanese agrees. “We are living in a golden age for independent publishing. Technology has changed the economics of producing books to the point where we're seeing a flood of amazing, talented writers published by niche and boutique presses,” he says. “What the major publishers once thought of as the midlist is shifting to the indies. And great books that couldn't generate enough commercial interest to get published by a big firm are now getting published.”

Small presses are often “run because they have a very passionate founder who believes in a particular mission,” Friedman says. “Some are very focused on a niche, and they can do extremely well there. But those are the exceptions,” she says. “I don't think that means traditional publishers will disappear. There will always be a need for them, at least for the next 10 to 20 years, to do the packaging and the distribution and the licensing, and all the moving parts to have an international blockbuster.”

Bole expects to see ongoing growth in the independent book publishing market, whether among self-published authors or small presses. “You see that growth in the double digits sometimes year over year,” she says, adding, “I think that will continue to grow, as more say ‘I'll do it myself.’”

She also predicts more consolidation among small presses. “Scale is really important, so you need a lot of content, a lot of selling to keep the machine running,” says Bole. Many small presses are even opening with the goal of eventually being acquired by a larger firm. “The big breakout indies,” says Albanese, “they get acquired by major publishers to bring them to the next level of commercial success.”

Barnes, the magazine editor, says independent publishers are seeing a resurgence “with many great-looking and well-written books that are racking up big sales numbers and winning prestigious awards.” Yet even for Barnes, it is difficult to see how they can compete with major publishing houses, at least in the short term. “I doubt the Big Five will lose their dominance anytime soon,” he says. “But it is encouraging to me to see how much ground independent publishers have gained.”

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Background

From Clay to Parchment

Long before books, or even the invention of the alphabet, stories and information were shared by word of mouth. Storytelling was the basis of some of the most famous works of literature known today, such as Homer's Iliad, which was shared orally before ever being committed to print. For most of human history, oral tradition was the most common way to communicate, and it remains so today.

The physical book traces its roots to Mesopotamia in 3300 B.C., where the Sumerians inscribed symbols onto clay tablets using a wooden stylus. The clay was then baked in a kiln or left to dry in the sun for preservation. This early form of writing, known as cuneiform, began as wedge-shaped pictures. Over time, the shapes transitioned into phonograms, symbols that represent a sound, similar to how words are written phonetically today. Eventually, around 100 B.C., an alphabet-based script replaced those symbols.39

Although the clay tablets were useful for record keeping, they were difficult to move. To increase portability, the Egyptians adopted papyrus, a type of paper derived from a river plant of the same name. Not only was papyrus lighter than tablets, it could be cut for brief documentation or letters or rolled into scrolls, allowing for lengthier writing.40 The use of these scrolls dates back as far as 3000 B.C.

In the first century, the Romans developed the codex, a method of stacking and folding papyrus, then binding it with a wooden cover into what looks a bit more like the books of today. Over the next few centuries, the codex replaced nearly all use of scrolls, and at the same time parchment overtook papyrus as the preferred paper material.41 The codex grew in popularity among early Christians, who used the method to transport and share biblical texts.42

This clay tablet containing cuneiform symbols was made in Sumer in the third millennium B.C. Cuneiform was one of the earliest forms of writing. (Getty Images/Universal Images Group/Werner Forman)

By the third century, an early printing press was in use in Asia. It relied on carved woodblocks covered in ink that were then pressed into cloth or sheets of paper.43 The oldest-known printed book, the Diamond Sutra, was created in 868 in China. The work is a 17.5-foot-long scroll comprising pictures and Buddhist text that was translated into Chinese.44 The text, a 6,000-word religious teaching, was made from seven individual woodblock prints that were connected into a scroll.45

In the 11th century, the Chinese perfected this early means of printing when inventor Bi Sheng created individual wooden characters that allowed for more efficient translation and printing of religious texts.46

European Printing Press

In Europe, the woodblock printing method was not widely used. In the Middle Ages, monks created Bibles by hand, copying scripture and other manuscripts for use in the monastery. It was not until the 15th century that printing and production became more mainstream.47

In 1439, German inventor Johannes Gutenberg developed his own means for printing with moveable text. Instead of using wooden blocks, his machine relied on a metal alloy, melted into a mold to form letters and other shapes that could then be reset or reused based on the document being printed. An oil-based ink was applied to the molded letters, which could then be positioned and pressed onto paper.48 Gutenberg's printing press allowed for the mass production of books in a simplified fashion.49

Gutenberg used this press to produce a 1,200-page Latin translation of the Bible's Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament. This so-called Gutenberg Bible was the inventor's first and only large-scale print project. Only 185 units of the costly tome are thought to have been printed.50 Books did not immediately take off because much of the population of Europe was illiterate.

Johannes Gutenberg invented a press using movable type and used it to print Latin translations of the Bible, including this one, which dates from around 1455. It sold for $4.9 million in a 1987 auction. (Getty Images/Sygma/Rick Maiman)

Around 1465, printers relying on Gutenberg's press took the technology to Italy, where they printed books and religious pamphlets and sold them to those aboard shipping vessels coming through the Mediterranean. The information then traveled to the next port, where it could be shared in print or read aloud.51

As the printing press grew in popularity and was refined to deliver texts more efficiently, it became a popular tool for religious groups to spread their message beyond their immediate towns or congregations. The printing press also broke the Catholic Church's stranglehold on information in Europe. Religious reformer Martin Luther relied on the press to quickly and cheaply produce a German translation of the New Testament and print pamphlets sharing information on Protestantism. From 1518 to 1525, pamphlets and books promoting Luther's Protestant Reformation made up one-third of all publications sold in Germany. The same printing and distribution methods were used by scientists, intellectuals and philosophers to share their findings and views on the world during the Enlightenment, which began in the 17th century.52

Publishing Houses Grow

Early book distribution was primarily an individual pursuit, with one person acting as printer and seller. Printing and publishing houses, often family-controlled and passed from generation to generation, brought some organization to this process, first in Europe in the 16th century and then in the American colonies in the 17th.

As the invention of the steam-powered press in 1810 and the widening use of stereotype plates in 1846 made creating short pamphlets or books even easier and cheaper, authors, printers and publishers were organizing themselves better. The process of printing was separated from publishing, with the latter role becoming more entrepreneurial and marketing-based. In turn, like the Catholic Church before them, publishers became the new gatekeepers of literature. They decided what was written and printed, and how much authors would be paid, often with a goal of maximizing the publisher's profit.53

The business of publishing gained strength alongside an increase in literacy, thus driving the proliferation of books. Attending school became a more common — and later mandatory — exercise for children. In 1776, the literacy rate in the United States was around 15 percent.54 By 1940, less than 3 percent of the American population was illiterate.55 No longer were the religious or the wealthy the only readers. Instead, a wider swath of the population was looking for printed text as a source of entertainment and further education. This gave rise to the tabloid-style “penny press” newspapers of the 19th century. At the same time, publishers produced serialized books, making reading more affordable for the masses.

These publishers recognized that the materials the new readers sought needed to be affordable and portable. Printing houses were turning out hardcover books at a price of around $2.50 in the 1930s (approximately $40 today when adjusted for inflation).56 The books were heavy and expensive to produce, but were seen as a symbol of wealth.

In 1939, entrepreneur Robert de Graff reintroduced the idea of a paperback book. Such small books were first popularized in the 1840s in versions that were not original content, but rather a poorly done copy of an existing work. De Graff called his iteration “Pocket Books,” and they were intended to be cheaper to produce and easier for readers to take outside the home. He estimated that the smaller size and lack of a hardbound cover could reduce the price to 25 cents. Publishing companies were hesitant at first, but the idea quickly caught on and they struggled to keep up with demand.57

The other major difference between Pocket Books and hardcover volumes was the retail location. When de Graff proposed his paperback book idea in the 1930s, the United States had an estimated 500 bookstores, mainly in the biggest cities. De Graff thought more Americans would buy books if they could quickly and easily do so without finding a bookstore. Instead, the Pocket Book was placed in groceries, drug stores and other everyday retail outlets.

Within the first two years, an estimated 17 million copies of Pocket Books were sold. Small, specialized publishers established themselves in the paperback market, looking to cash in on the trend. They often focused on genres that were not necessarily in existence in the hardcover market, such as romances and westerns.58

The proliferation of the paperback market and new genres gaining popularity resulted in a rapid expansion of book production. From 1950 to 1960, production increased 36 percent. During the following decade, it grew 140 percent.59 This coincided with an increase in the number of bookstores. In 1966, B. Dalton became the nation's third big-box book retailer, joining Books-A-Million and Barnes & Noble. Borders followed in 1971. By 1997, there were 12,363 big-box and independent bookstores in the United States.60

Digitization Arrives

Just as paperbacks revolutionized who read, the digitization of books changed how books are read. Digitization was spawned by Michael S. Hart, a student at the University of Illinois who in 1971 was granted extensive research time in the school's computer lab.61

Hart wrote later that he decided “the greatest value created by computers would not be computing, but would be the storage, retrieval and searching of what was stored in our libraries.” This spawned Project Gutenberg, which to date has digitized more than 60,000 books that can be downloaded or read online for free.62

Initially the text could be read only on a stationary computer that had the digitized files within its memory. The advent of the internet allowed the files to be shared, but again only to a desktop computer. That changed in 1998 when Peanut Press introduced the Rocket eBook, the first e-reader that could connect to the internet for book download and then be carried virtually anywhere. The Rocket eBook was followed by the SoftBook Reader and the EveryBook Reader, the latter with a library of books built in.63

In 2004, Sony released its own e-reader, the first to rely on e-ink technology that does not emit blue light like an LCD screen, thus making it appear more like a book and easier on the eyes for long periods of reading.64

E-book technology took off in 2007 when Amazon released the Kindle. Between 2008 and 2010, e-book sales jumped 1,260 percent. The explosion of e-book popularity led some industry experts to predict the demise of the printed book — yet more than a decade after the Kindle was introduced, e-book readership has leveled off to around 20 percent of all books consumed annually.

“There were all these dire predictions that e-books were going to eliminate physical books within five or 10 years. Nobody's predicting that anymore,” said Bradley Graham, co-owner of Politics and Prose, an independent bookstore in Washington.65

Other book formats are slowly growing in popularity, including audiobooks. In 2019, the Pew Research Center reported that 20 percent of U.S. adults had listened to an audiobook in the previous year, up from 14 percent in 2016.66 Serialization is also making a comeback. Slicing longer books into shorter pieces was popular in the 1800s because it made book reading more affordable if the purchase was spread over a longer period.67 Today, startups are serializing original content in both e-book and audiobook format.

The ease of print-on-demand has changed who can write and distribute books. To publish a book, an individual is no longer bound to a publishing company. Instead, an author can write a book and put it up for sale on any number of online platforms; the book is then printed as orders come in. Though self-publishing does not have the reach of a Simon & Schuster or Hachette, it allows works to enter the book world that may have been rejected by mainstream publishers.

This Borders bookstore in San Rafael, Calif., was one of almost 400 that closed in 2011 when the retailer filed for bankruptcy protection due to competition from Amazon. (Getty Images/Justin Sullivan)

The advent of the internet also had an impact on where books are purchased. Big-box retailers such as Barnes & Noble no longer hold the same clout in the market. In 2013, online book sales surpassed the number of books sold in brick-and-mortar stores for the first time.68 This tracked with a declining number of book retailers. In 2012, there were 10,800 bookstores, down more than 1,500 from 15 years earlier.69

Much of this decline was driven by Amazon, which launched as an online bookstore in 1995. Today, it is the largest book retailer in the world, selling upwards of 800 million print books and 560 million e-books per year.70 Its dominance has forced the shuttering of large retail stores such as Borders, which filed for bankruptcy protection in 2011, as well as smaller stores.

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Current Situation

Brick-and-Mortar Rebirth

Although the majority of Americans purchase their books online, independent bookstores are making a comeback.

In 2009, the American Booksellers Association, the trade group for independent bookstores, reported that its 1,401 members had 1,651 bookstores. By mid-2019, membership increased nearly 35 percent to 1,887, as did the number of stores owned to 2,524. Social media, an increase in print book reading and the push to shop locally are all driving the trend.71

Ryan L. Raffaelli, an assistant professor at the Harvard Business School, attributes the independent bookseller resurgence to a redefined mission — one focused not just on stocking shelves, but on serving the community through curating the right selection of books, convening social activities and serving as an intellectual center for customers. “It is about the community which surrounds the bookstore and those interactions between author and reader, and readers and booksellers, and readers with each other,” one bookseller told Raffaelli.72

Kepler's Books in Menlo Park, Calif., has been in business for 65 years, but even it had to lean further into the community model to ensure its long-term success. According to CEO Praveen Madan, about eight years ago the store was facing a crisis and had to rethink its purpose. “It's really not about selling books … because people can buy books anywhere,” he says. Instead, Madan and other stakeholders defined a new purpose for the store: to “engage, enrich and inspire our community” through literacy and cultural enrichment activities.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, then president of Liberia, speaks at Politics and Prose, an independent bookstore in Washington. Community events such as this one in 2016, which promoted a biography of Sirleaf, have helped independent stores stage a resurgence. (AFP/Getty Images/Nicholas Kamm)

Amazon is attempting to cash in on the move back to physical stores. Its brick-and-mortar outlets called Amazon Books are cropping up from coast to coast. In 2019, the retailer opened its 20th such store in Scottsdale, Ariz. The books sold in these stores are carefully chosen according to an Amazon algorithm and include new releases, books with customer ratings of at least four out of five stars on the retailer's website, books of local interest and bestsellers in other stores.

“There are a lot of products people want to see, touch and feel before buying,” said Drew Sheriff, director of Amazon Physical Stores. “That is one of the benefits of having a physical store.”73 Such stores accounted for almost $4.4 billion of Amazon's total $87.4 billion fourth-quarter revenue last year.74

Barnes & Noble, the largest remaining retail bookseller in the United States, is also rethinking its business model. It was acquired in August 2019 by a hedge fund, Elliott Advisors.75 The company had been struggling over the past decade, falling from a peak of 726 stores in 2008 to 627 in 2019, which led some industry analysts to question whether it could survive in the age of Amazon.76

In 2018, Elliott acquired a large but struggling British bookseller, Waterstones. The business model Elliott used at Waterstones will be put in place at Barnes & Noble, with each store able to operate more as a community bookseller, choosing the items sold to serve the local population.

“The main thing is that there isn't a template; there's not some magic ingredient,” said James Daunt, the CEO of Waterstones, who became the CEO of Barnes & Noble as well. “The Birmingham, Alabama, bookshop, I imagine, will be very different from the one in downtown Boston. They don't need to be told how to sell the exact same things in the exact same way.”77

Book Serialization

Startups are looking to change the way people read. In August, Inkitt in Germany announced a $16 million round of funding for its crowdsourced publishing platform. The startup launched its first app in 2017, which allowed authors to upload parts of their book or a full manuscript and get data-driven feedback from readers.

In February 2019, Inkitt launched a second app, Galatea, that takes the best-performing works from the Inkitt app and transforms them into serialized book episodes. Readers receive one free book segment per day, estimated at 15 minutes of reading, and can opt to immediately buy additional episodes or wait until the following day for the next free version. Each episode includes effects such as sounds or vibration that correspond to the words the reader sees on the screen.78

The company, which calls itself “the world's first reader-powered book publisher,” estimates that it earns an average of $12 per book, and the apps boast 1.6 million readers and 350,000 uploaded stories. Inkitt is looking to add new languages to the platform and has reportedly been approached by larger publishers interested in using the platform to share their own content.79

“Five hundred years ago Johannes Gutenberg started mass printing books, 10 years ago Jeff Bezos took a picture of them and called them e-books. But nothing happened except the digitization,” said Inkitt founder Ali Albazaz. “At Inkitt, we saw [these] amazing devices in our hands that are capable to [do] much more and asked ourselves what would be the best storytelling experience of using smartphones to their fullest potential.”80

Inkitt has a competitor in Serial Box, a company that serializes original books into episodes in both audio and e-book format. Each story is told over the course of 10 to 16 weeks. Subscribers get the first episode of each book free and can then opt to pay $1.99 for each additional episode or choose a season pass averaging $13.99. In addition to its original works, the company has concluded deals to expand content for well-known television shows, movies and characters, including “Orphan Black” and DC and Marvel comics. Co-founder Molly Barton explains that by heavily relying on readership data and feedback, the company is able to change upcoming installments to better match content to reader interests.81

“In some cases, we expanded the role of minor characters that were clear fan favorites, and we've altered the outcome of a given season to set up the next one a bit differently than originally planned,” Barton said. The “model of episodic stories creates a different rhythm of pacing that can be exciting for readers and writers alike.”82

Libraries' Challenges

Libraries have been rethinking their own models to better account for readers shifting away from print books. Many are focusing on reducing print collections to open up space for social activities or classes, and are bringing in new technologies ranging from 3D printers to audio production equipment. At the same time, they are working to give patrons access to the book formats they want.

In 2019, public libraries and schools across the United States and around the world had record high usage of their e-books, up 15 percent over 2018.83 But they are facing new restrictions on access from major publishing houses. Beginning last Nov. 1, Macmillan began allowing library systems to purchase only one e-book copy during a book's first eight weeks on the market.

Macmillan argues that the move is necessary to ensure its economic viability. “We believe the very rapid increase in the reading of borrowed e-books decreases the perceived economic value of a book,” Macmillan CEO John Sargent wrote in a letter to librarians. “This causes a problem across the publishing ecosystem.”84 According to the company, library lending accounted for 45 percent of all Macmillan e-book reads.85

Librarians are pushing back. In October, a group connected to the American Library Association (ALA), which promotes the use and expansion of libraries, delivered tens of thousands of signatures to Macmillan encouraging the company to suspend its decision. According to Miguel Figueroa, director of the ALA's Center for the Future of Libraries, “we're very concerned about how this limits access to digital collections, especially as it relates to people where the library is the most or only affordable way to access books, and communities that need accessibility, like visually enhanced products.”

The ALA also provided a report to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee in late 2019, arguing that publishing companies were participating in “anti-competitive conduct” by restricting libraries' e-book access. Amazon, for example, will not sell digital books published on its platform to libraries.86

“This is a particularly pernicious new form of the digital divide; the Amazon Publishing books are available only to people who can afford to buy them, without the library alternative previously available to generations of Americans,” the ALA said. The group also argued against companies' pricing practices, noting that an e-book version of The Codebreakers by David Kahn, a lengthy account of the history of cryptography, could be purchased for $59.99 by an individual consumer, which grants lifetime access to the book. Conversely, it said, a library must pay $239.99 for one copy with a lifespan of only two years.87

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Outlook

Disappearing Ink?

While industry insiders disagree over the future of the book, they share one common view: Content is king.

“The book, in whatever format, has a strong future,” said Jacks Thomas, director of the London Book Fair. “People always need knowledge and people always need stories.”88

In what form readers engage with and share these stories, however, is up for debate.

“Is the weight of storytelling going to be moving to another medium like augmented reality, [virtual reality], games?” says publishing consultant Friedman. “I think there is always going to be some form of a print book, but I do think it will be much more like vinyl [music] is today.” There will be devotees of that format, she says, but it will not be the medium readers seek first.

Future book innovations might not come from the Big Five publishing houses. “My feeling about publishers in general is that they are mainly looking for ways to maximize their current profits, and they're not doing much of interest,” says Bob Stein, founder of the Institute for the Future of the Book, a New York think tank.

Bole, the Independent Book Publishers Association CEO, says that the future might be driven by independent publishers who “can pivot and be able to do cool and fun and innovative things” without being tied to tight timelines or strict profit margins. “I would be shocked if the innovation came out of the existing Big Five publishers,” says Friedman. “It would most likely come from some sort of smaller firm … not based in New York book publishing.”

Some see these shifts being pushed by Amazon, which has outsized influence in the market. “I think over the next 10 years, one of the biggest factors is what Amazon does,” says Friedman.

Others think it might come from authors. “Once the tools of creation get to the point that authors require multimedia to tell their stories most effectively, that's when the real change happens,” says Albanese of Publishers Weekly.

Stein sees it as an evolution toward more social communication media. “The way that people express themselves changes as a function of the tech they have available,” he says. “The ability to express yourself using text and sound and pictures and computer programs, it's just too exciting,” he says, adding, “the consumption of media, whatever it is, is going social.”

Experts are divided on whether the print book, as it is known today, can survive decades or even centuries from now. “For sure, there are already completely electronic texts and publishers operating today,” Albanese says. “I don't think print is going away, because it is the best technology we have for reading. Its persistence in some ways defies common sense, but it exists because it works, and we like it.”

Stein agrees: “We'll have books … but 100 years from now, will people still be trying to write the great American novel? I can't imagine that.”

Yet some hold onto hope that print books will stay relevant. “The reality is that there is great anxiety that the book might disappear,” said Wolf, the literary researcher. “But people like myself have good reason to hope that will not be true, for readers' sakes.”89

Stein cautions against taking a short-term view of the future of books, noting that the printing press was invented 500 years ago, and it took another 40 years from its inception to come up with page numbers and another 150 for what is regarded as the first novel to be produced.

“It takes humans a while to wrap their heads around new technology and what it might do,” he says. “The river is moving, but it's quite wide and moving rather slowly, and we don't know when that's going to change.”

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Pro/Con

Can humanity move to a completely digital book world?

Pro Caleb Mason Publisher and Author, Publerati. Written for CQ Researcher, March 2020 E-books will eventually replace print books because of the benefits they provide to readers, the business model and civilization. It's now possible for anyone with a smartphone, computer or other networked device to access any title at the exact moment they want it, so they can immediately begin reading. More significant, unlike in traditional libraries, an infinite number of readers can enjoy the same title at the same time, including people living in remote regions. More than just access, e-books improve the reading experience. We can now enlarge fonts, helping people read later into life. You no longer lose your place in the book. Because of a built-in dictionary, there no longer is a reason for not looking up a word's meaning. Then there are the benefits to the book business model. Right now, an author is paid 10 to 15 percent of a print book's net sale price. That price, in the case of a $20 book, is around $12, after the bookstore keeps 40 to 50 percent of the retail price, so the author gets just $2. The real inefficiency occurs in how physical books are distributed and what this means for authors. A publisher ships, say, 100,000 copies of a title for the holidays based on initial demand. The publisher believes this opening order means future demand will be high, so it immediately reprints another 50,000 copies to avoid being out of stock. After the holidays, retailers report slow sales and ask to return their unsold copies. Often the publisher will declare the book out of print, which means bookstores cannot receive credit for returns. The big loser here is the author, whose print edition is prematurely declared out of print. Finally, consider the impact e-books will have on civilization's march of progress. Important books will be digitized to ensure their continued availability, and their print editions will be protected in the world's great libraries. The lower cost of publishing new e-books will open up access to more writers, many of whom are being shut out by publishers due to consolidation and their need for large volumes to make money. Future generations will look back and wonder how life was possible when people would get in polluting gasoline-powered cars, drive to a bookstore and often not find the print book they wanted. The environmental impact of decreasing paper usage for books will reduce waste in landfills and protect forests.

Con Jennifer Baum Publisher, Scribe Publishing Company. Written for CQ Researcher, March 2020 I operate a small independent press that launched in 2011. Several of our titles have sold well enough, and long enough, for us to understand that our sales follow industry trends, in which e-book sales can be expected to represent a small fraction of print sales. Granted, our bestselling titles are nonfiction: Cookbooks and travel guides are the kind of books that people want to touch. We've spent much of the past decade overcoming the challenges of traditional print book distribution, and the path to understanding successful e-book distribution, at least for a press like mine, has been meandering at best. Our first distributor (who has since gone out of business) did not want the rights to distribute our e-books, so we sold them independently. I've met other publishers who had the good fortune of being equipped to release Kindle editions as soon as it was an option, when Amazon launched a first iteration of its digital text platform at the same time the Kindle was introduced in 2007. Those publishers were in the right place at the right time, and their high sales numbers reflected that until the trend caught on and everyone else began releasing e-book editions. Our current distributor offers us the option to release e-books through new subscription models, which seems to be the way digital media is headed. The music industry had a similar transition, but fundamentally the product is different. In my own music-loving life, once I realized the beauty of having any album at my fingertips and began to appreciate the nuanced suggestions of the app's impersonal algorithms, I was in. It's not the same for books — at least for me. I want to have a physical relationship with my book. I want to feel it. I want to remember what the cover art looks like. When I read an e-book, not only can I not fall asleep due to the screen's glare, I have a harder time recalling the title, the art, the author — all the things that make a book what it is. As a publisher, this is troubling. While listeners take great care not to damage a CD, a well-loved, marked-up, dog-eared book can conjure memories of time spent on a beach or pinpoint a great moment of ideation. Neither role translates digitally for books in any authentic way, and for that reason print will be king for a long time to come.

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Short Features

K-12 Slow to Turn the Page on Print Books

While e-books and audiobooks have staked their claim in the leisure reading market, educational publishing has been slower to follow the trend.

Most K-12 schools continue to rely on printed textbooks, at times supplemented by digital resources. Print makes up at least half of the instructional materials in a majority of school districts, according to the Consortium for School Networking, an association for school technology officials, even though about 60 percent of the districts have adopted programs to provide students with computers or tablets that would make e-textbook use more feasible.1

Internet access and cost are two of the biggest barriers to wider e-textbook usage. Nearly one in five American K-12 students lack access to broadband internet at home. Many digital textbooks require an internet connection for full functionality, although some allow a download of materials that can be used offline.2

When downloading or home internet access are not options, some schools rely on workarounds, such as loaning students portable hot spots that provide an internet connection, partnering with businesses that offer free WiFi or letting students come to school early or stay late.3

But money is an issue — paying for these options come on top of the investment needed to move to and sustain digital textbooks. Unlike colleges, where students pay for their own books, most public schools cannot pass on this expense. And while multiple students can use print textbooks for many years, the e-textbook subscription model can require a license for each student, making e-textbooks more expensive than their printed counterparts.4

Open educational resources, which are free online textbooks and learning materials made available to teachers, are one option. But districts have been slow to adapt, and the materials do not necessarily align with state education standards.5

Some researchers and educators are concerned about a transition to digital. “While new forms of classroom technology like digital textbooks are more accessible and portable, it would be wrong to assume that students will automatically be better served by digital reading simply because they prefer it,” wrote Patricia A. Alexander and Lauren M. Singer Trakhman of the University of Maryland.6

And several studies show students actually prefer a printed book over digital learning, while others indicate that students might not comprehend or remember information learned digitally as well as they do from printed materials. Various researchers have found that digital reading encourages skimming and multitasking.7

“Digital environments may not always be best suited to fostering deep comprehension and learning,” researchers from Spain and Israel wrote in a 2018 study. “[P]roviding students with printed texts despite the appeal of computerized study environments might be an effective direction for improving comprehension outcomes.” They also suggested working with students to improve their performance with electronic texts.8

A few schools have made the leap to completely digital education. In 2013, Archbishop Stepinac High School in White Plains, N.Y., a private, all-boys institution, made headlines when it became one of the first U.S. schools to eliminate print textbooks. Using grants, Stepinac was able to partner with educational publisher Pearson to create a digital library to meet the school's educational requirements.9

A student at Archbishop Stepinac High School in White Plains, N.Y., searches for his textbooks online in 2013. In that year, the school became one of the first in the United States to stop using print textbooks. (AP Photo/Jim Fitzgerald)

The interactive digital books are offering new opportunities for teachers who are no longer limited to what is in a textbook. “Students can search for what they want, just like with Google, so now we can teach them to interpret and analyze the information,” said Matthew Hogan, Stepinac's social studies chair.10

The model for higher education publishing, on the other hand, has been tilting in the past few years in favor of greater digital content to save both publishers and students money. According to the Association of American Publishers (AAP), a membership group that collects data on the publishing market, college students are steadily spending less on their course materials: AAP reported a decline of 29 percent in spending on textbooks from 2014-15 to 2018-19. More cost-effective options, such as rental textbooks or Inclusive Access — a service that provides all course materials on the first day of class within the course fee — is driving this change, as well as increased open source textbooks and other materials that can be viewed online for free.11

In July, Pearson, one of the world's largest textbook publishers, announced what it called a “generational business shift” to a digital-first model. All future releases will first be published in digital format. And instead of updating and reprinting its 1,500 U.S. titles, the publisher will instead make all updates digitally.12

“If there's a scientific breakthrough, a compelling business case study, developments in contemporary politics or world events, you don't need to wait three years. You can, from one semester to another, update content,” said Pearson CEO John Fallon.13

According to the company, 62 percent of its revenue already comes from digital products, and a vast majority of college students use some digital content in their learning.14

In December 2017, Cengage, another giant in the textbook publishing industry, announced Cengage Unlimited, referred to as the “Netflix for textbooks.” For a flat fee, students can access all textbooks on the company's digital platform. The $120 per semester price drew millions of subscribers.15 The extent of the platform's reach, however, remains unclear because of uncertainty over the company's future.

In May 2019, Cengage announced it planned to merge with McGraw-Hill Education.16 The merger, which is under review by the U.S. Justice Department, could allow the platform to expand into McGraw-Hill's catalog, making the offering more useful for students who were dependent on their professors using Cengage materials.

“This is a very big development,” said Joe Esposito, a senior partner at Clarke & Esposito, a publishing consulting company. “It has the potential to restructure the textbook business, as it may make the aims of the Cengage Unlimited plan more viable.”17

(SAGE Publishing, which publishes CQ Researcher, also publishes higher education textbooks.)

— Heather Kerrigan

[1] “CoSN 2019 K-12 IT Leadership Survey Report,” Consortium for School Networking, April 1, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y2w65ovh.

[2] “‘Homework gap’ shows millions of students lack home internet,” The Associated Press/NBC News, June 10, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yx966u7f.

[3] “How America's Schools are Addressing the Homework Gap: Speak Up 2017 Findings,” Project Tomorrow, May 2018, https://tinyurl.com/tow43dl.

[4] Peter Greene, “Why E-Textbooks Haven't Taken Over Schools,” Forbes, Aug. 27, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/sandqk6.

[5] Kipp Bentley, “What Is Holding Back the Rise of Digital Textbooks?” Center for Digital Education, Sept. 10, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/t4pgq3n.

[6] Patricia A. Alexander and Lauren M. Singer Trakhman, “The enduring power of print for learning in a digital world,” The Conversation, Oct. 3, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y9sd5okc.

[7] Margaret K. Merga and Saiyidi Mat Roni, “The influence of access to eReaders, computers and mobile phones on children's book reading frequency,” Computers & Education, June 2017, https://tinyurl.com/wrdllwc; Pablo Delgado et al., “Don't throw away your printed books: A meta-analysis on the effects of reading media on reading comprehension,” Educational Research Review, November 2018, https://tinyurl.com/sdtggxo.

[8] Delgado, ibid.

[9] Gary Stern, “No more books: High school goes all digital,” Journal News, Sept. 12, 2013, https://tinyurl.com/tnlj2jd.

[10] Ibid.

[11] “New Data Shows Continued Decline In Student Spending On College Course Materials,” Association of American Publishers, Dec. 12, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/vbq2aqk.

[12] Lauren Camera, “Textbook Giant Pearson Makes Major Shift Away From Print to Digital,” U.S. News & World Report, July 15, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/vzb8l4y.

[13] Brian Barrett, “The Radical Transformation of the Textbook,” Wired, Aug. 4, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y23muc5f.

[14] Camera, op. cit.

[15] Jon Chesto, “College textbook company aims to be the Netflix of higher education,” The Boston Globe, Dec. 11, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/u7reltu; Lindsay McKenzie, “Cengage Unlimited Hits 1 Million Subscriptions,” Inside Higher Ed, Feb. 25, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/v82npkh.

[16] Lindsay McKenzie, “McGraw-Hill and Cengage Merger Delayed,” Inside Higher Ed, Jan. 30, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/r6ddgb8.

[17] Lindsay McKenzie, “Rival Publishers Join Forces,” Inside Higher Ed, May 2, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y24vhmqv.

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Libraries Stay Relevant By Meeting New Demands

Walking into the main level of Temple University's Charles Library, visitors find soaring architectural elements, open-concept seating areas, a 24-hour café, “maker” spaces equipped with 3D printers and a virtual reality studio. They will see a community meeting room and computers whose use is restricted to nonuniversity residents of the surrounding North Philadelphia community.18

What they will not find is some 80 percent of the library's physical book collection, which is now accessible only to a book-retrieving robot. That was part of the trade-off when the school invested $175 million in the new, state-of-the-art library.

“We looked at the way contemporary students want to work,” said Joe Lucia, dean of Temple Libraries. “The learning and study behaviors of 21st century undergraduates are not always similar to traditional … quiet individual study practices that you might associate with a library.”19

Temple University's redesigned Charles Library created room for open seating areas by making 80 percent of its book collection accessible only by using a retrieval robot. Many libraries are reinventing themselves to meet patrons' changing preferences. (Temple University/Betsy Manning)

As readership preferences change, public and university libraries are finding ways to adapt and remain relevant to reader, researcher and community needs.

In 2001, The Chronicle of Higher Education published an article titled “The Deserted Library,” arguing that digital media were rendering the campus library obsolete. But almost two decades later, while the spaces might be changing, campus libraries appear to have staying power, if the large investments in new and renewed spaces across the country are any indication. Announcements by schools including California State University at Monterey Bay that they would open digital-only libraries were rolled back in favor of physical buildings.20

Georgia Tech, for example, is due to complete a yearslong revamp of its library later this year, with the majority of its physical collection moved offsite and replaced by increased seating capacity, meeting spaces and multimedia studios. The move was driven in part by how students use the collection: In 2018, more than 99 percent of that usage was digital.21

The new library focuses on creating spaces more conducive to student and faculty use, whether alone or in groups. As part of the redesign, quiet study carrels and rooms are being added along with reconfigurable seating, rolling tables and multimedia spaces that allow in-person and virtual collaboration.22

The University of Rhode Island is experimenting with more technology as well. In 2018, it opened the nation's first university library-housed artificial intelligence (AI) lab. The lab is available to students and staff, as well as members of the wider community, who can use the space to explore AI, its functions and its possible impact.

“Having the lab in a library sends a strong message to our community and to others in academia, government and business,” said Karim Boughida, dean of libraries at the school. “The library values intellectual freedom, access and social justice and is a hub for active learning, across the university.”23

The primary users of a university library — students — do not always agree with the decision to replace physical texts with new technologies, seating, or cafes. A survey by Northern Virginia Community College found that students value libraries most for traditional offerings such as research assistance, help registering for classes and study space.24 When Yale University announced its intent to replace three-quarters of the undergraduate library's books with more open space, students protested.25

Public libraries also are rethinking their space and collections. “We see a rebalancing of how much space is devoted to things like books or even computer terminals and how much is space devoted to people,” says Miguel Figueroa, director of the American Library Association's Center for the Future of Libraries, which tracks library trends.

Increasingly digital lives demand human connection and interaction, he says. “People really appreciate a civic space where they can meet their community members,” Figueroa says, and public libraries have responded by devoting space to activities such as fitness classes, crafts and computer coding.

As with the changes in university libraries, however, not everyone is a fan. In a recent study, James M. Donovan, director of the University of Kentucky College of Law, argues that removing more books from libraries could diminish patrons' engagement with texts vital for deeper learning and comprehension.26

In seeking to keep pace with digital trends and gain wider appeal, Donovan wrote, both public and university libraries “risk inflicting an irreparable harm upon not only the collections they hold in trust, but more importantly upon the patrons who expect them to provide an environment conducive to study and learning.”27

Even so, libraries across the country are coming up with new, nonbook ways to serve the community. The Free Library of Philadelphia was the first in the nation to install a culinary literacy kitchen, an industrial-grade space where the library can promote cookbooks, teach about nutrition and help community members build mathematical and chemistry skills that underly cooking.28

Libraries are building maker spaces and encouraging patrons to create and distribute their own content. The Chicago Public Library system has a YOUmedia program where teenagers can use 3D printers, laser cutters and music or audio production equipment.29 The District of Columbia public library has given space to personal history projects, allowing patrons to bring in photos or videos to digitize for their own purposes or for broader community use.30

In addition, public libraries are expanding the voices that reach patrons. Public libraries in many Illinois communities serve as promotion points for new authors. Library staff and the public vote on the best self-published book, and the winner is included in the library's e-book collection.31 “We can certainly trail that forward and imagine a future where more self-published authors, locally generated content or public domain content that is repurposed and remixed all become part of the library collection,” Figueroa says.

As they create space for new endeavors, libraries are becoming more strategic about how they build their collections. Figueroa says some are increasingly reliant on interlibrary or consortia systems to share books across a geographic region, which allows sometimes scarce funds to be redirected to new projects. Other libraries are focusing on newly released titles, while some let patron demand drive their acquisitions.

Despite the changes, Figueroa does not foresee the elimination of print collections. “I don't think we'll ever tip too far below 50 percent devoted to the collection. People still have a very strong affinity for the material in libraries, and they expect that from libraries,” he says.

While the physical space is changing, libraries remain an important part of American culture. The average U.S. adult made 10.5 visits to a library in 2019, more than the number of other common leisure activities, such as going to the movies, a sporting event or a museum, a Gallup survey found.32

“As communities across the country struggle with the challenging political divides of our time, libraries remain a space where people come together for learning, conversation and connection,” the library association said in its 2019 “State of America's Libraries” report. “In many areas, the library is the only place that is truly accessible and inclusive for all.”33

— Heather Kerrigan

[18] Natalie Kostelni, “Temple University opens $175M library of the future,” Philadelphia Business Journal, Sept. 16, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/uqqqxoq.

[19] David Murrell, “A Look Inside Temple's New $175 Million Charles Library,” Philadelphia Magazine, Sept. 19, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y5kmd56u; Kate O'Brien, “Charles Library shapes the future at Temple and beyond,” Temple Now, Aug. 23, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/te6tpg7.

[20] “‘What is a library now?’: CSU Monterey Bay Opens New Library,” E-Research Library, April 20, 2009, https://tinyurl.com/umj2spx.

[21] “Library Next,” Georgia Tech Library, accessed Feb. 2, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/vra66ug.

[22] Ibid.

[23] “URI opens first artificial intelligence lab housed in a university library,” University of Rhode Island, Sept. 25, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/slqsb2a.

[24] Melissa Blankstein, Christine Wolff-Eisenberg and Braddlee, “Student Needs are Academic Needs,” Northern Virginia Community College, Sept. 30, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/qlj4ted.

[25] Dan Cohen, “The Books of College Libraries Are Turning Into Wallpaper,” The Atlantic, May 26, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y35r8m62.

[26] James M. Donovan, “Keep the books on the shelves: Library space as intrinsic facilitator of the reading experience,” Journal of Academic Librarianship, Dec. 18, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/wybo29f.

[27] Ibid.

[28] “Culinary Literacy Center,” Free Library of Philadelphia, accessed Feb. 7, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/r5chkxd.

[29] “YOUmedia,” Chicago Public Library, accessed Feb. 7, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/qqrtd9s.

[30] “The Memory Lab,” DC Public Library, accessed Feb. 7, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/tsjeawq.

[31] Lucy Tarabour, “Soon to Be Famous Illinois Author Project Leads the Way to National and International Competition,” Illinois Library Association, March 25, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/wmnsls4.

[32] Justin McCarthy, “In U.S., Library Visits Outpaced Trips to Movies in 2019,” Gallup, Jan. 24, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/ra79jqc.

[33] “State of America's Libraries 2019,” American Library Association, April 7, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y5w25jpp.

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Bibliography

Books

Aldrich, Rebekkah Smith , Resilience , ALA Neal-Schuman, 2018. A library system director tracks emerging industry trends and reviews possible solutions to the challenges library leaders face, which include decreased government funding and environmental, social or economic disruptions.

Fischer, Steven Roger , A History of Reading , Reaktion Books, 2019. A language and literature researcher discusses the history of reading, from ancient symbols through today's digital texts.

Kurowski, Travis, Wayne Miller and Kevin Prufer , eds., Literary Publishing in the Twenty-First Century, Milkweed Editions, 2016. Publishers, writers and other industry experts share their perspectives on shifts in the book world, how companies are working to keep up and what might define the future.

Wolf, Maryanne , Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World , HarperCollins, 2018. A researcher explores what can happen to the brain in an increasingly digital world.

Articles

Barrett, Brian , “The Radical Transformation of the Textbook,” Wired, Aug. 4, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y23muc5f. A journalist looks at trends in the textbook industry and how different companies are adapting to an increasingly digital world.

Bentley, Kipp , “What Is Holding Back the Rise of Digital Textbooks?” Center for Digital Education, Sept. 10, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/t4pgq3n. A former teacher explores the reasons why schools — and by extension, publishers — have not moved to completely digitized textbooks.

Cheng, Andria , “Bookstores Find Growth as ‘Anchors of Authenticity,’” The New York Times, June 23, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y6znu58v. A journalist documents how independent bookstores are thriving by becoming community gathering places that feature more than books.

Day, Matt, and Jackie Gu , “The Enormous Numbers Behind Amazon's Market Reach,” Bloomberg, March 27, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y5ete5kq. Business reporters review Amazon sales data and the company's dominance in various sectors of the economy, including the book market.

McKenzie, Lindsay , “Rival Publishers Join Forces,” Inside Higher Ed, May 2, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y24vhmqv. The writer reviews the announcement by publishers Cengage and McGraw-Hill Education to merge and create a digitally focused educational book company.

Mod, Craig , “The ‘Future Book’ Is Here, but It's Not What We Expected,” Wired, Dec. 20, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y8nrpd9o. The author explains that despite predictions of what today's book might be, print has not varied much from what it was a century ago, nor have e-books evolved much since their creation in the mid-2000s.

Rosenblatt, Bill , “Why Ebook Subscription Services Will Finally Succeed In The Coming Decade,” Forbes, Jan. 3, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/sadhj7x. A technology consultant considers why e-book subscription services have not yet taken off and why they may grow in the coming years.

Trachtenberg, Jeffrey A. , “‘They Own the System’: Amazon Rewrites Book Industry by Marching Into Publishing,” The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 12, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yb7oraa8. A journalist describes Amazon's dominance as the world's largest bookseller and its reach in the publishing market.

Reports and Studies

Cavalli, Eddy , et al., “E-book reading hinders aspects of long-text comprehension for adults with dyslexia,” Annals of Dyslexia, July 16, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/ug5syvf. Researchers measure the impact of printed versus e-book reading on the comprehension of adults with dyslexia, and compare the results with non-dyslexic university students.

Delgado, Pablo , et al., “Don't throw away your printed books: A meta-analysis on the effects of reading media on reading comprehension,” Educational Research Review, November 2018, https://tinyurl.com/to85p6t. A study finds that reading comprehension is higher for paper-based material than for digital texts.

McCarthy, Justin , “In U.S., Library Visits Outpaced Trips to Movies in 2019,” Gallup, Jan. 24, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/ra79jqc. A survey shows that U.S. adults visit the library more often than they participate in other leisure activities.

Perrin, Andrew , “One-in-five Americans now listen to audiobooks,” Pew Research Center, Sept. 25, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yylneu2a. Americans' preference for audiobooks is growing, according to a Washington research organization, but print remains the dominant form of book reading.

Raffaelli, Ryan L. , “Reinventing Retail: The Novel Resurgence of Independent Bookstores,” Harvard Business School, January 2020, https://tinyurl.com/tstcmf7. A business professor explores the factors that contributed to the comeback of independent bookstores even in the face of massive online retail sales.

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The Next Step

Audiobooks

Culver, Nina , “Pasadena Park Elementary School library uses grant to buy audiobooks, enhancing students' literacy,” The Spokesman-Review, Jan. 22, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/taqkbom. A Washington state elementary school will use audiobooks loaded on a small, iPod-like device to help struggling readers keep up with their classmates.

McGlone, Peggy , “If that audiobook narrator sounds familiar, check your theater program,” The Washington Post, Feb. 14, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/ule4b9l. Actors take on a new role for the Library of Congress' National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled: recording audiobooks.

Tudor, Heather , “Got Books? Have you heard of the Libby App?” Velva Area Voice, Feb. 13, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/tmmxop4. A small-town public library in North Dakota offers access to an online lending library of 33,000 audiobooks and e-books.

Bookstores

Clark, Travis , “A Brooklyn comic store inspired by ‘Fortnite’ is delivering a new kind of experience for kids at a time when comic shops need to adapt to survive,” Business Insider, Nov. 8, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/rq26tlf. A new comic book shop in Brooklyn aimed at kids operates on a subscription model in which readers can rent unlimited comics, one at a time, for $30 a month.

Danzinger, Pamela N. , “How Indie Bookstores Beat Amazon At The Bookselling Game: Lessons Here For Every Retailer,” Forbes, Feb. 12, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/wyhy4qd. Independent bookstores are thriving by providing a sense of community and developing relationships with patrons, even as Amazon's market dominance grows.

Wilson Fuoco, Linda , “Indie bookstores cater to books and community,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Feb. 27, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/yxxy36el. Book-signing events and dog-friendly policies are part of the appeal of new independent bookstores in the Pittsburgh area.

Libraries

De León, Concepción , “The 10 Most Checked-Out Books in N.Y. Public Library History,” The New York Times, Jan. 13, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/rs8ztxw. The highest-circulating titles in the New York Public Library include children's books such as The Snowy Day and classic novels including Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Holson, Laura M. , “More Libraries Are Doing Away With Overdue Fines,” The New York Times, Feb. 23, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/sgfc6yx. To encourage borrowing and usage, many libraries have stopped charging fines for overdue books.

Sweat, Candace , “Mobile Internet Hot Spots Available for Checkout at Dallas Libraries,” NBC-Dallas/Fort Worth, March 2, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/rru5r73. Ten branches of the Dallas Public Library now allow library cardholders to check out one of 900 mobile hot spot devices for take-home use for 30 days at a time.

Textbooks

“Free online textbooks help OSU-OKC concurrent students,” The Shawnee News-Star, Feb. 26, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/unnpjoe. High school students taking free classes offered by Oklahoma State University-Oklahoma City can get free or low-cost textbooks online.

Carrns, Ann , “That Digital Textbook? Your College Has Billed You for It,” The New York Times, Feb. 28, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/trmua26. A backlash is developing against inclusive access programs, contracts between colleges and publishers in which students are automatically billed for online textbooks when they enroll in a class.

Sias, Jessica , “College textbook conspiracy,” Sonoma State Star, Feb. 25, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/sq8fjxu. A class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of independent bookstores accuses textbook publishers and large bookstore chains of anti-competitive actions — an allegation the defendants deny.

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Contacts

American Booksellers Association
333 Westchester Ave., Suite S202, White Plains, NY 10604
914-406-7500
bookweb.org
Not-for-profit group that supports the growth and success of independently owned bookstores.

Association of American Publishers
455 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., Suite 700, Washington, DC 20001
202-347-3375
publishers.org
Trade association that collects industry statistics and promotes First Amendment rights for book publishers.

Audio Publishers Association
333 Hudson St., Suite 503, New York, NY 10013
646-688-3044
audiopub.org
Membership organization that advocates on behalf of those in the audio publishing industry.

Center for the Future of Libraries
50 E. Huron St., Chicago, IL 60611
312-944-6780
ala.org/tools/future
Division of the American Library Association that works to track changes in the library industry and promote innovation to better serve communities.

Gallup
901 F St., N.W., Washington, DC 20004
202-715-3030
gallup.com
Global polling and analytics company that explores trends on, among other things, U.S. reading and library use.

Idea Logical Co.
300 E. 51st St., Apt. 17C, New York, NY 10017
917-680-8598
idealog.com
Consulting company focused on the impact of digitization in the publishing industry.

Independent Book Publishers Association
1020 Manhattan Beach Blvd., Suite 204, Manhattan Beach, CA 90266
310-546-1818
ibpa-online.org
Membership organization that advocates on behalf of small presses, self-published authors and other independent publishers.

Institute for the Future of the Book
74 N. 7th St., #3, Brooklyn, NY 11211
dan@futureofthebook.org
futureofthebook.org
Think tank that researches the evolution of books and its impact on intellectual discourse.

Pew Research Center
1615 L St., N.W., Suite 800, Washington, DC 20036
202-419-4300
pewresearch.org
Nonpartisan think tank that conducts polling, research and analysis on issues affecting American life.

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Footnotes

[1] Jim Milliot, “‘Where the Crawdads Sing’ Was Top Seller in 2019,” Publishers Weekly, Jan. 3, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/u5p7mra.

[2] “Publishers Weekly: ‘Crawdads’ Tops One Million Print Sales,” deliaowens.com, Aug. 5, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/uqhh9m5.

[3] “Summary of Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens,” Audible, https://tinyurl.com/wmswcma.

[4] Alison Flood, “Where did the story of ebooks begin?” The Guardian, March 12, 2014, https://tinyurl.com/yacqttun.

[5] Andrew Perrin, “One-in-five Americans now listen to audiobooks,” Pew Research Center, Sept. 25, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yylneu2a.

[6] “Discover the Secrets of Dooku: Jedi Lost,” StarWars.com, March 27, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y6zg25jf.

[7] Ezra Klein, “The Future of Reading,” Columbia Journalism Review, May/June 2008, https://tinyurl.com/tdqgjxn.

[8] Daniel Lyons, “Why Bezos Was Surprised By the Kindle's Success,” Newsweek, Dec. 20, 2009, https://tinyurl.com/u24ad8r.

[9] Lucy Handley, “Physical books still outsell e-books — and here's why,” CNBC, Sept. 19, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yyxnx7lh.

[10] “To Read Or Not to Read: A Question of National Consequence,” National Endowment for the Arts, November 2007, https://tinyurl.com/p7tyg7g.

[11] Alexandra Alter, “The Plot Twist: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far From Dead,” The New York Times, Sept. 22, 2015, https://tinyurl.com/td7ylmy.

[12] Handley, op. cit.

[13] Perrin, op. cit.

[14] Nicholas Quah, “Audiobooks are no longer exempt from the broader shifts in the podcast world,” Nieman Lab, June 18, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/uxybglf.

[15] Adam Rowe, “U.S. Audiobook Sales Neared $1 Billion in 2018, Growing 25% Year-Over-Year,” Forbes, July 16, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/tphpkaw.

[16] “Pearson goes ‘digital first’ in U.S. college market,” Reuters, July 15, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yyaqq6qq.

[17] Lindsay McKenzie, “Rival Publishers Join Forces,” Inside Higher Ed, May 2, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y24vhmqv.

[18] Perrin, op. cit.

[19] Christopher Ingraham, “Leisure reading in the U.S. is at an all-time low,” The Washington Post, June 29, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y53y3265.

[20] “Average hours per day spent in selected leisure and sports activities by age,” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/wxrkmpx.

[21] Maryanne Wolf, Reader Come Home (2018).

[22] Ibid.

[23] Perrin, op. cit.

[24] Ibid.

[25] Constance Grady, “The 2010s were supposed to bring the ebook revolution. It never quite came,” Vox, Dec. 23, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/sqc8pns.

[26] Handley, op. cit.

[27] Glenn Leibowitz, “7 Reasons Why Ebook Sales Are Falling — and Print Book Sales Are Rising Again,” Inc., Oct. 19, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/ycj8ja6y.

[28] Jane Friedman, “The Myth About Print Coming Back (Updated),” janefriendman.com, March 26, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/s8df8d9.

[29] United States of America v. Apple Inc. et al., U.S. Department of Justice, July 10, 2013, https://tinyurl.com/swsgks6.

[30] Sian Cain, “JD Salinger estate finally agrees to ebook editions,” The Guardian, Aug. 12, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y6g2s2ap.

[31] Anne Mangen, Bente Rigmor Walgermo and Kolbjørn Kallesten Brønnick, “Reading linear texts on paper versus computer screen: Effects on reading comprehension,” International Journal of Educational Research, December 2013, https://tinyurl.com/ycv9boll.

[32] Pablo Delgado et al., “Don't throw away your printed books: A meta-analysis on the effects of reading media on reading comprehension,” Educational Research Review, November 2018, https://tinyurl.com/sdtggxo.

[33] Rachel Nuwer, “Are paper books really disappearing?” BBC, Jan. 24, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/sopfr6y.

[34] Tiffany G. Munzer et al., “Differences in Parent-Toddler Interactions With Electronic Versus Print Books,” Pediatrics, April 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y5ojquer.

[35] Matthew H. Schneps et al., “E-Readers Are More Effective than Paper for Some with Dyslexia,” PLoS One, Sept. 18, 2013, https://tinyurl.com/tdzamcm.

[36] Eddy Cavalli et al., “E-book reading hinders aspects of long-text comprehension for adults with dyslexia,” Annals of Dyslexia, July 16, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/ug5syvf.

[37] Lauren M. Singer and Patricia A. Alexander, “Reading Across Mediums: Effects of Reading Digital and Print Texts on Comprehension and Calibration,” The Journal of Experimental Education, July 21, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/r6mrx57.

[38] Lauren M. Singer and Patricia A. Alexander, “Reading on Paper and Digitally: What the Past Decades of Empirical Research Reveal,” Review of Educational Research, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/qkk94ql.

[39] Joshua J. Mark, “Cuneiform,” Ancient History Encyclopedia, March 15, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yandn5uj.

[40] “What is a Codex?” University of Michigan, https://tinyurl.com/tbomh4j.

[41] Ibid.

[42] “A Brief History of Books,” Google Arts and Culture, https://tinyurl.com/vyl366q.

[43] Christopher McFadden, “The Invention and History of the Printing Press,” Interesting Engineering, Sept. 12, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y9c6ugnr.

[44] Jason Daley, “Five Things to Know About the Diamond Sutra, the World's Oldest Dated Printed Book,” Smithsonian Magazine, May 11, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/y8c5zn9x.

[45] “May 11, 868 CE: Oldest Printed Book Published,” National Geographic, May 11, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/u4a6gcg.

[46] McFadden, op. cit.

[47] Harry Bruinius, “Copying the Bible like a medieval monk,” The Christian Science Monitor, May 6, 1999, https://tinyurl.com/wwrk2wd.

[48] Hellmut E. Lehmann-Haupt, “Johannes Gutenberg,” Encyclopedia Britannica, https://tinyurl.com/y9je9gqq.

[49] McFadden, op. cit.

[50] “Gutenberg Bible Sold for Record $5.39 Million,” The Associated Press, Oct. 22, 1987, https://tinyurl.com/rrgremp.

[51] “Printing Press,” History.com , May 7, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/yc33g5vr; David Roos, “7 Ways the Printing Press Changed the World,” History.com , Aug. 28, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/v6jy9vl.

[52] Ibid.

[53] Robin Roemer, “History of the Book: Disrupting Society from Tablet to Tablet,” Western Oregon University, 2015, https://tinyurl.com/r6lg7rm.

[54] Roos, op. cit.

[55] “120 Years of Literacy,” National Center for Education Statistics, https://tinyurl.com/og4mors.

[56] Roemer, op. cit.

[57] Ibid., Chapter 12.

[58] Ibid.

[59] Joseph Sunra Copeland, “U.S. Book Production,” McSweeneys, Feb. 7, 2011, https://tinyurl.com/tgqsxj8.

[60] David Vinjamuri, “The Trouble With Finding Books Online — And A Few Solutions,” Forbes, Feb. 27, 2013, https://tinyurl.com/vp9tb5g.

[61] Emily Langer, “Project Gutenberg creator Michael S. Hart dies at 64,” The Washington Post, Sept. 8, 2011, https://tinyurl.com/umup4vg.

[62] “The History and Philosophy of Project Gutenberg by Michael Hart,” Project Gutenberg, August 1992, https://tinyurl.com/sbuk2md; “Free eBooks — Project Gutenberg,” Project Gutenberg, https://tinyurl.com/hmmj3g4.

[63] Roemer, op. cit., Chapter 14.

[64] “First-Generation Electronic Paper Display from Phillips, Sony and E Ink to Be Used in New Electronic Reading Device,” Sony, March 24, 2004, https://tinyurl.com/vvr67cc.

[65] Ally Schweitzer, “Amazon Was Supposed To Have Crushed Bookstores. So Why Are Indie Bookshops Booming In D.C.?” WAMU, July 6, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/txd9cp6.

[66] Perrin, op. cit.

[67] Susan Bernstein and Julia Chavez, “Serialization,” Oxford Bibliographies, July 24, 2013, https://tinyurl.com/vnh2wlw.

[68] Taylor Soper, “Online sales exceeded physical retail revenue for US book publishers in 2013,” GeekWire, June 30, 2014, https://tinyurl.com/scesyrg.

[69] David Vinjamuri, “The Trouble With Finding Books Online — And A Few Solutions,” Forbes, Feb. 27, 2013, https://tinyurl.com/vp9tb5g.

[70] Matt Day and Jackie Gu, “The Enormous Numbers Behind Amazon's Market Reach,” Bloomberg, March 27, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y5ete5kq.

[71] Joyce M. Rosenberg, “Indie booksellers persevere despite Amazon, rising costs,” ABC News, Dec. 11, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/uonhowo.

[72] Ryan L. Raffaelli, “Reinventing Retail: The Novel Resurgence of Independent Bookstores,” Harvard Business School, January 2020, https://tinyurl.com/tstcmf7.

[73] Brandon Brown, “Amazon to open brick-and-mortar book store in Scottsdale,” Phoenix Business Journal, Nov. 18, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/vmyzwj3.

[74] “Amazon.com Announces Fourth Quarter Sales up 21% to $87.4 Billion,” Amazon, Jan. 30, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/vzewad8.

[75] “Elliott Completes Acquisition of Barnes & Noble,” Barnes & Noble, Aug. 7, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/ufln93p.

[76] Peter Osnos, “The Endangered Fate of Barnes & Noble,” The Atlantic, Feb. 5, 2013, https://tinyurl.com/qtng6ga; Alexandra Alter and Tiffany Hsu, “Barnes & Noble Is Sold to Hedge Fund After a Tumultuous Year,” The New York Times, June 7, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y4vtlpz9.

[77] Alter and Hsu, ibid.

[78] Ingrid Lunden, “Inkitt raises $16M led by Kleiner Perkins to publish crowdsourced novels in ‘mini-episodes,’” TechCrunch, Aug. 28, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y44guw87.

[79] Ibid.; Inkitt, “About Us,” Inkitt, https://tinyurl.com/tnu4fz7.

[80] Adam Rowe, “The New Storytelling App Galatea Brings Special Effects To Smartphone Fiction,” Forbes, Jan. 26, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/u7potfs.

[81] Adam Rowe, “How Serial Box Engages Audiences Through Serial Storytelling,” Forbes, Dec. 5, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/runap92.

[82] Ibid.

[83] “Public Libraries Reach Record-High Ebook and Audiobook Usage in 2019,” Rakuten OverDrive, Jan. 8, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/v7cugwe.

[84] “Letter from CEO John Sargent,” Macmillan Publishers, Oct. 29, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/qq2uk5h.

[85] Jason Daley, “Why New Restrictions on Library E-Book Access Are Generating Controversy,” Smithsonian Magazine, Nov. 4, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/rwacfyt.

[86] Ibid.

[87] “Competition in Digital Markets,” American Library Association, Oct. 15, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yxxjl6gv.

[88] Handley, op. cit.

[89] Nuwer, op. cit.

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About the Author

After graduating from George Washington University, Heather Kerrigan started her journalism career at Governing magazine, reporting on state and local politics and policy, with a focus on the public workforce, the environment, health care, education and technology issues. Since co-founding River Horse Communications, Heather has offered freelance editorial services to multiple outlets, including blogging for two government-focused publications. She is the author of Retire Rich With Your 401(k) Plan.

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