I think there will be a major shift with the next generation. A lot of the reasons for keeping hardcover books are due to tradition/"I grew up with this therefore I like it"-similarly to music.
I agree that consumable books will disappear faster than collectible books. In fact, I believe Amazon released statistics a while back showing pulp fiction sells better (compared to paper copy sales) than pretty much any other genre on the Kindle.
But I am not so sure collectible books will be around in 30 or 50 years. By then, the concept of a bookshelf may seem hopelessly backwards. A lot of the historical symbols of pride have become meaningless (or at least significantly less appreciated), why wouldn't paper copies of Knuth's books follow?
I still think the notion of a 'collectible' book is a good one, but probably not quite as phrased there.
Pure pulp will, I agree, largely leave the printed medium. Items like Twilight may I suspect stay around as they're 'a collectible series' in spite of perceived literary merit, almost as posters or similar do today.
I've compared the future of the book here before to the future of the horse in the early days of cars. They will retain a luxury and a prestige with enthusiasts for certain specific applications, but their previous general usage will likely vanish.
What will remain in print? Some may want classic texts like Don Knuth's TAOCP, though personally for that sort of thing I'd always rather have an eBook. I foresee primarily luxury 'coffee table' books - lavishly illustrated, beautifully made, designed to be objects of desire in themselves, independent of their content.
Otherwise, we're talking legacy content. I have a 1980 copy of a huge, library reference quality world atlas that can be pried out of my cold dead hands thank you, and a few other similar volumes, but pretty much everything else would frankly serve me better as an ePub file on a home server that could get synched to my various devices.
As an aside - I would LOVE a historic online mapping service. The ability to view a map moving through time, communities displacing, rivers changing course, harbours silting up, whole countries appearing and disappearing, simply by selecting an area and scrolling along a time axis, would destroy my ability to achieve anything productive for a very long time ;-)
> As an aside - I would LOVE a historic online mapping service. The ability to view a map moving through time, communities displacing, rivers changing course, harbours silting up, whole countries appearing and disappearing, simply by selecting an area and scrolling along a time axis, would destroy my ability to achieve anything productive for a very long time ;-)
In theory something like this could be achieved by wading through the regular releases of openstreetmaps[1] data. Although there you're more likely to see the results of the collection/moderation process than anything else. Still, possibly interesting to look at.
> A lot of the historical symbols of pride have become meaningless
I'm too lazy to search for the exact reference this very moment, but I remember reading about how Seneca was making fun of the wealthy, not-so-educated people of his age that were collecting papyrus books in order to show how cultivated they were. This was happening 2,000 years ago, I fail to see how such a long habit would disappear over night just because people in Sillicon Valley live in a different world.
I think the LP analogy holds very well here: when LPs came out, having a large musical collection was a major point of pride for most people. Today it's an edge case. I'm guessing that will happen even with "collectible" books, although I do think it'll take a long time-at least one generation, probably two.
How long were horses used for transportation? There were no alternatives to paper books at all until personal computers and PDFs. E-book readers aren't perfect yet but they're the first real alternative to books.
The first real alternatives to horses included dogs, canoes, camels, donkeys, mules, travois, oxcarts, barges, hot air balloons, steam locomotives, bicycles, coal-dust-powered Diesel cars, biplanes, and zeppelins, before we got to the Model T.
The first real alternatives to paper books included papyrus, microfiche, reel-to-reel microfilm, card catalogs, Rolodex files, the khipu, the filmstrip, the erasable notebook of ivory leaves, the phonograph, Indecks cards...
Surely microfilm replaced paper books in many uses some time ago.
I think the last time I saw a horse being used for transportation (pulling a two-wheeled cart) was, uh, last week.
So it might be a lot messier than a simple replacement.
Books haven't been around for far longer because they are timeless, but just because it took a while for technology to become superior. We've passed that point and the transition is going to be swift.
I don't know if there is such a big similarity to music... We interact directly with a book, so using an ebook is a very different experience. But listening to music sounds pretty much the same whether the source is a computer, my phone, or a CD.
Maybe it is just because I grew up with books, but I really prefer to actually hold a real book to read it (although I do read ebooks when it's more convenient). The tactile experience of a real book is something that I think ebooks will have a very hard time trying to surpass. So I think that there will always be a place for them.
Although perhaps I'm starting to sound like someone who will only listen to music on LPs!
I think your last sentence hits the nail on the head. People still love vinyl because of it's "feel". Without fail, everybody I've heard who talks about books says the same thing: it's the feel.
I have a box of vinyl in my basement. It still doesn't get listened to in favor of the lower quality MP3s. With ebooks, you don't even lose the quality.
This was actually one of the key motivations behind starting my tablet case business (www.dodocase.com). I think there are many physical objects in life that create an emotional experience that can't easily be explained, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
I am also a surfer and I found this explanation of riding a hollow wooden surfboard a beautiful description of just this type of experience.
"You obviously can’t actually feel the wood when it’s wrapped in a layer of glass & resin. But beyond the tactile, there’s definitely an emotional aspect to paddling, sitting, and standing on a piece of wood in the water.
You ever driven a Ford truck from the 50′s? Slept on the dirt in wool blankets? Cleaned a big fish? Sipped 40-year old Scotch? Chopped down a tree with an axe? Like surfing a wood board, all of those kinds of things awaken something inside of us that the plasticine era has covered up in layers of shiny dross." Benny http://www.hollowsurfboards.com/Q&A.htm
A lot of the historical symbols of pride have become meaningless (or at least significantly less appreciated)
Can you give an example? A hundred years ago a rich man wore a handmade suit and a Rolex and drove around in a Rolls Royce. In a hundred years time, the only difference is that the car will fly...
A hundred years ago a Rolex was the best timekeeper you could put on your wrist. Now it's a ridiculous bauble that can barely keep time despite constant expensive maintenance. Technology has made the rich silly.
More than a hundred years ago far more absurd things than Rolex in the face of quartz digital were detailed by Veblen in The Theory of the Leisure Class
Note that what you're describing are items that are symbols of pride due to their limited accessibility. I don't think social symbols based on indicating wealth will ever go away. Collectible books like TAOCP are a different type of symbol and usually not indicative of great wealth. These non-wealth based symbols often disappear (over very long periods of time), especially when you can access the same product in a more convenient method.
I agree that consumable books will disappear faster than collectible books. In fact, I believe Amazon released statistics a while back showing pulp fiction sells better (compared to paper copy sales) than pretty much any other genre on the Kindle.
But I am not so sure collectible books will be around in 30 or 50 years. By then, the concept of a bookshelf may seem hopelessly backwards. A lot of the historical symbols of pride have become meaningless (or at least significantly less appreciated), why wouldn't paper copies of Knuth's books follow?