The Fall… and Rise of Books

Sarah Vincent//Blog Writer

In 2015, almost every journalistic piece written about books and their competitors, the e-books, warned of the decline of the book. E-books were a huge hit, and there were many books that could only be found online, leaving paperback lovers out of the loop. The accessible portability and overwhelming capacity to hold many books made parents think that it could be the new way for their children to get into reading.

The paperback book was slowly making its way towards the background as e-books dominated the market with the rising interest in technology. You could go to any restaurant, ride on any form of public transportation, or even take a walk through a park and manage to see young children sitting with their neck craned, holding an e-book. Except once e-readers allowed games and access to the internet, children no longer wanted them to read, and parents were letting them slowly take over their child’s life.

It wasn’t until recently that headlines were saying that the book was back. Amazingly, millennials were the ones requesting to have paperback and hardback books. The preference of actual books to e-books was 62%. There is just something about a physical book in your hands that can’t be beat by a device that hurts your eyes after ten minutes of staring into its blinding light and which neglects to give you proper page numbers.

I remember when I was gifted an e-book by my boyfriend’s mother. She knew I loved to read, and she thought that it could be something that I used for a very long time as I went off to college to study literature and writing. My reaction was full of gratitude but I never even turned on the device once. I have always been one to cherish the feeling that holding a book gives you. The old smell of the ink-printed pages and the feeling that the thicker-than-average paper gives as you flip them over could never beat the mechanical swipe to the left that an e-book requires.

It’s heartwarming to see that the book is making a comeback. Fear of a world without books seemed a little too close for comfort, but with people recognizing the importance of a book, the fear is diminishing, and e-books just can’t keep up.