More on the Death of the Book

I don’t want to hear another word about the death of the book. I’m not suggesting that electronic options won’t do well in the market. If they’re well priced and well designed, they very well might. But that won’t kill the book as we know it, the book that we love.

Did satellite kill television? Ultimately it altered it. But that’s nothing like death. Both things are still around. They co-exist. If anything, satellite options forced commercial television to be better, smarter. Competition that integrates into existing technology has a way of doing that.

A healthy, well accepted electronic book reader will enhance the print market. It will alter it, but it will make it better. People will talk about books more easily, they will even talk more about them electronically. For some people, it will make books easier to interact with, easier to purchase. Easier to read.

And will it change things? Of course it will change things. Is change necessarily bad? I don’t think so. But what do I know? I used to be the fastest paste up artist in the production department. I could have curled up in a ball in the corner and cried about the changes in my world. I did not. By the time those changes could have touched my life, I had already moved on.