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…