The demise of print books came up in an after hours discussion with colleagues last night. What I sometimes wonder is where will all those books, much less National Geographics go? I suppose they could go into landfills. Print books are biodegradable objects, after all, apart from plastic coatings sometimes used on covers. I suspect some do end up there.
For now, lots either reside on shelves collecting dust and slowly yellowing and becoming more brittle, or they re-circulate via garage sales, donations to various second hand shops or sales to used book stores. The last tends to be where a number of the books I don’t want to keep go–that or donations to local library book sales.
But all of this assumes a healthy market of print book readers. What will happen when these go away? Where will all the print books go when no one is buying (or wants, even for free) print books. Will they all go to landfills or incinerators? Or will they go the way of vinyl LPs–surviving because of the small dedicated cadre of people who still love the feel, look, and even smell of a print book. Maybe there will even be bibliophiles who consider the experience of a print book superior and there may even be niche print publishers who release “virgin” print books on high quality papers and bindings. Wouldn’t it be ironic if in twenty years a new generation of people rediscover print books and become “analogue” readers?
Stranger things have happened…
I doubt that paper books will ever be completely gone. Even in Star Trek the Next Generation the characters still had paper copies of their favorite or special books.
The problem that you describe of what to do with paper books when they are no longer needed has existed for years. When libraries weed their collections they must find a way to get rid of the books that they are deaccessioning. These could include for example copies that are in such bad condition that they can no longer be read or outdated encyclopedias. We had long discussion threads in library school of what to do with these books! You can donate them to organizations, use them for art projects, sell them to companies who will resell them to other libraries, ship books that are still useful to other countries, sell them to paper recyclers, or throw them in the trash. The catch here is that in some states libraries must sell the books they want to get rid of since they are considered town property. The invention of e-books I imagine will change the disposal options some.
There are already speciality presses in existence that produce limited numbers of specialty books. I expect they will switch to e-books for some topics, however books as works of art (think 3D or hand printed) will continue to be produced on paper.
Great comments Rosanna! One other place I’ve heard of where old, hard-bound books go is furniture stores. Every one of their “living rooms” have bookshelves with old books in them. I understand second-hand booksellers like Half Price Books sell “books by the yard” for such purposes. Interesting how we somehow think a well-furnished home includes shelves of books.
Your Star Trek reference is interesting. I wonder, however whether the writers of Star Trek tend to come from a paper book generation. There are a number of us who are ‘between the times’–between the old and new technology who use both, and find value in both. I wonder whether it will always be so.
Nice to dialogue with someone who actually knows something about these things!
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