Paper Is Dying Not Books

Ken's Blog

To continue the conversation started in my previous post, What's The Message?...

I'm not saying that books would disappear. Books are staying. Paper will disappear.

Paper is just the vehicle that delivers the ideas, the stories that are contained in "books."

Think about paper newspapers... real news that professional journalists deliver and that we need so badly, is not dead. But it's moving online, leaving paper behind. As the publisher of the New York Times said, "My job is to figure out how to bring the NYT online within 5 years." (Paraphrasing from memory)

Horses are not dead. Nor are buggies. But cars rule our roads and towns.

Music is not dead...

But vinyl is now a collector's item (excluding "digital vinyl" which is just marketing). CDs, which replaced vinyl, are dying. Online will be the way music is distributed.

Movies are not dead. But VHS was replaced by DVDs which will be all-digital before books are.

The point is that the industry (news, personal transportation, music, movies) does not die. The vehicles do.

Sorry to those who make impassioned arguments for paper books. Your very intensity is the definitive reason why books will be the last to be replaced. But...

Buying paper books will be a niche activity. Books themselves?

Books will thrive, more vibrant and diverse than ever due to digital delivery.

But they'll be digital.

If anything can be digitized, it will be.

The good news? You will still be reading paper books for 20 years, although it may get harder to find them. And...

Your kids won't care. They'll love their e-readers and look at your library of books in bewildered amazement/amusement.

By the way, I may be one of those. I feel no need to buy an iPad, Kindle, etc. I'm perfectly happy with paper books.

I'm very old-fashioned away from the computer. I lost my cell last week and I don't care.

So I'm almost the poster boy for paper books.

I'm just stating what I believe to be the inevitable.

All the best,