With the emergence of new media in publishing, many have begun to ask worried questions about the future of the book. In debates about the book's future, two completely different issues are generally confused. People are scared that their bibliophile copies of Anna Karenina will be taken away from them or that they will be forced for the rest of their lives to read the screens of automatic bank teller machines or play video games. I don't believe this for a moment. Books are an indispensable vehicle for our culture and have acquired a solid market position since their invention.
People like to read and write books.
The carefully composed linear narration that finds its intimate refuge in books corresponds so beautifully to the course of our lives that there will always be a large group of people who identify wholly with them. What rabid defenders of the printed book miss, however, is that the physical presence of books has been crumbling away for more than five centuries. The book's evaporation has seen the growth of the number of books produced while the price declined spectacularly. And the readability and usability of books has increased greatly. The disappearance of the physical book has been a pre-condition for centuries for the growth of book culture.