Library Stuff

“Lovers of ink and paper, take heart. Reports of the death of the printed book may be exaggerated. A 2012 survey revealed that just 16% of Americans have actually purchased an e-book.

Ever since Amazon introduced its popular Kindle e-reader five years ago, pundits have assumed that the future of book publishing is digital. Opinions about the speed of the shift from page to screen have varied. But the consensus has been that digitization, having had its way with music and photographs and maps, would in due course have its way with books as well. By 2015, one media maven predicted a few years back, traditional books would be gone.”

via WSJ

A new report, from ARL

“As obvious as this may sound at first, the 28th annual Chicago Tribune Printers Row Lit Fest, which concluded Sunday afternoon and drew an estimated 130,000 attendees and 200 authors to the South Loop on a sweltering, cloudless weekend, was not the kind of thing you could call up on a Kindle. It’s a telling paradox about book fairs: Even as the publishing industry marches toward a digital future, festivals like Printers Row, Washington’s National Book Festival (Sept. 22-23) and the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books (every April) continue to be large, bustling reminders of how much of the publishing world is still tangible — defiantly so.

via Chicago Tribune