Borders Bookstores is going out of business and people are lamenting the loss of a bookstore chain that nobody was really supporting in the first place. If all the people who claim they’ll miss Borders would have actually bought something there on a regular basis, Borders wouldn’t be going out of business. The fact that they are means not enough of their book loving supporters spent enough money to keep the bookstores open.
So many people are reminiscing about the tactile feel of books and how they can’t be replaced by e-books. Keep dreaming.
Books may be fun to read and hold now because that’s what we’re used to, but how precious will printed books be when they start costing hundreds of dollars for a single copy? How many people will still pine for the tactile feel of pages when they’ve never read any books except e-books since they were a child?
To hear people complaining about the loss of printed books is like listening to people complain about the loss of eight-track tape cartridges or the loss of buggy whips. The fact of the matter is that printed books are too expensive to print, to slow to distribute, and too cumbersome to store in the hopes of actually selling a copy.
Printed books are obsolete and deserve to disappear as quickly as possible like video rental stores, music stores, and post offices. The more you look to the past for the “advantages” of printed books, the more you’ll hold yourself back. Printed books obviously are not loved by everyone or else more people would have bought them. E-books are the future, whether you like it or not, so you might as well embrace the future now because e-books have their own advantages that far outweigh their disadvantages.
The main advantage of e-books is their lower cost, which printed books can never hope to match as time goes on. Don’t mourn for Borders. Celebrate the changing world of literature because this is an exciting time to move with the times and ride the wave of change rather than let it overwhelm and depress you.
Change happens, so rather than try to stop it, how about start trying to embrace it? It’s going to happen whether you like it or not, so you might as well find a way to like it. Printed books may be dead, but reading and learning doesn’t have to die along with it. Books are just another medium going the way of the dodo like audio CDs and video DVDs. Just think. One day you’ll be able to take your grandkids to a museum and show them that strange item behind class.
“Look, kids,” you can say. “That’s a book. We used to read those back when I was growing up.” And then your grandkids will stare at the strange item before them, shrug their shoulders in disinterest, and wander away, wondering why their grandparents seem so attached to everything ancient, obsolete, and useless.