Books have a future

For a number of years now e-books have seemed like the future. A recent article in The Wall Street Journal suggests they may already be the past.

Perri Ormont Blumberg writes that the Kindle and similar electronic readers are now much more popular with baby boomers than they are with their children and grandchildren, who much prefer actual paper books. This may not be great news for Kindle, but I call it wonderful news for the rest of us.

If this news surprises us it is because most people in today's world, except for the very old and the very young, seem glued to their electronic devices all day long. They do so many things one-handed because the other hand always holds their phone. Whether eating or shopping or driving a car, their phone is on and active. So why are these very people the ones reading books?

One explanation Blumberg finds is that books seem to encourage rather than discourage conversation. When phones are used more for texting than for actual conversation, we may get the idea that younger people want to avoid talking with others. The fact that people sitting together in restaurants are so often checking their phones, instead of talking with the person across from them, may suggest the same thing. But perhaps that is not entirely the case. Perhaps the young enjoy the fact that having a book in your hands invites more conversation than holding a Kindle does.

Books have covers, which unlike an anonymous book on a Kindle, can draw comments and start conversations. I recall an Amtrak conversion I once had with a man who noticed I was reading Robert McCammon's Boy's Life, a novel he had enjoyed. Then there was the woman who burst into laughter when she saw I was holding P.J. O'Rourke's Don't Vote: It Just Encourages the Bastards. Those pleasant conversations with strangers were inspired by books.

Blumberg also writes, "For other younger readers, a physical book offers a blessed break from a digitized life." If you work all day in front of a screen, then spend so much of your free time looking at your phone or a television, a book made of paper with pages you can turn may seem like a wonderful change of pace. They may also be easier on the eyes.

Baby boomers, meanwhile, were among the first Kindle customers. They learned to like them, and now in retirement they still find them convenient, especially when on a cruise or sitting in the backyard. Older people are trying to reduce their possessions, not add to them, and electronic readers help them in this cause.

Of course, you might draw the same conclusion Blumberg did just by walking into a bookstore. Most of the customers one finds there are younger than baby boomers.

The book publishing industry still has a future. Whether or not the ebook industry has one remains to be seen.