Make no mistake, I love physical books. I love the weighty feel of a book in my hands. I love the aroma of a book when you open it whether a hardback, new from the publisher, or a musty old paperback that simmered for decades on some obscure shelf. I love the way they line up, thick and thin, as neat rows of multi-colored spines, on my many bookshelves.
But, now, I find myself contemplating the coming death of the physical book.
The symptoms are many, and they include those cute little free libraries (which I, yes, love), the disappearance of used bookstores, the preference of many readers for ebooks (“So easy to carry!”), and the cancellation of the annual Newberry Library book fair.
I never thought it would come to this. Then again, I never thought that a newspaper like the Chicago Tribune, where I worked for 32 years, would wither to a shell of itself, a minor player in the media world of news reporting.
This isn’t exactly an obituary for the physical book, because libraries will continue to hold them, at least for a while. Some will be kept as family heirlooms or as quaint throwbacks to an earlier time. I wouldn’t be surprised if some printed books continue to be produced for a niche audience who have money to pay for an odd old technology and find a kind of cachet in it. The way LP records still linger on.
Nonetheless, the physical book—the building block of my education, my entertainment, and my work for decades—is no longer a building block for the 21st century world. The physical book, once a keystone of culture and society, is now fading away from significance and relevance.
Nonetheless, the physical book—the building block of my education, my entertainment, and my work for decades—is no longer a building block for the 21st century world.
Think of the last time you were in the home of someone born after 1980. Were there bookshelves? Were there books? Or think of riding on a bus or in an airplane. How many people are reading a book? How many are looking at their electronic devices?
Anything a Human Could Intellectually Create
What we think of as a book dates back some 2,000 years. Books have been a product for the masses since Johannes Gutenberg and his movable-type press went into operation around 1450.
Over those nearly seven centuries, the book has remained an amazing piece of technology. An object that enabled the distribution of hundreds of thousands of words between two covers in an easily transportable form. An object that could transmit esoteric philosophy and ribald satire and fairy tales and virtually anything else a human could intellectually create.
There are still some used bookstores around, but nothing like the scores that dotted the Chicago city and suburban landscape in the 1970s and 1980s. I used to haunt those stores, many of them hole-in-the-wall operations, looking for books by favorite authors or with subjects or titles to grab my interest.
One reason for the sharp drop in their number is competition from the Internet. But another is that people, increasingly, aren’t interested in a book they can hold in their hands. I know a good number of Baby Boomers who grew up reading books and are now opting for ebooks, and, if a Boomer isn’t reading a physical book, is someone from Gen X or Gen Z or Gen Alpha likely to pick one up?
In the last week, there’s been a lot of cheeping and chirping about the decision of the Newberry Library to cancel its annual used book sale after 38 years. There are, apparently, a number of reasons behind this decision. What's clear is this: if the sale made money hand over fist every year, it would continue. The Newberry has decided used books as a money-maker aren’t worth the trouble.
Other indications of society turning away from physical books abound. For me, the most telling one is the little free library a block away from my house down Paulina Street.
I’m a big fan of little free libraries, and I’ve written on this site in their defense in the face of an effort by a Chicago alderman to tax them and limit their availability. They are a good way to promote reading and help the environment by keeping books away from the landfill.
However, the books that end up in that little free library on Paulina...and all the other small book boxes I see in my walks around Uptown, Edgewater and Rogers Park...are there because there’s nowhere else for them to go.
Once upon a time, you could sell your books to used bookstores or give them to charity book sales, such as the one run by the Newberry. Those opportunities have dried up. What can you do with a book you no longer want?
Hitting Home
This hits close to home for me. I have a personal library of maybe five thousand books that have been a kind of intellectual community for me for half a century.
It includes an extensive collection of books about Chicago that I gathered as a Tribune reporter and later when I wrote The Loop: The “L” Tracks That Saved and Shaped Chicago. I have several bookshelves on religion and spirituality, and dozens with works of fiction and even more with works of history, biography, and other nonfiction. I hold onto books that I read because I like to refer back to them, particularly the history books, and to re-read them.
I don’t want the physical book to go out of fashion. But it’s happening.
Throughout the early decades of building my collection, I knew that, when it was time for me to dispose of the books, I could find a home or homes for them.
I figured there would be younger versions of myself who would find as much pleasure as I have from, say, my Chicago collection or perhaps my spirituality books. And, because, for the most part, the books are books of substantive research or of literary merit of perennial interest, I thought bookstore owners would want them to resell. As late as 1995, I could have drawn up a list of stores I was certain would want my books.
Now, I’m afraid there will be no home for these books. I can’t imagine, now, that there is a young person—meaning anyone 40 and younger—who would want my Chicago books. Why take my copy of The Promised Land by Nicholas Lemann when you can get it as an ebook? Or my copy of The Saloon by Perry Duis, or Don’t Cry, Scream by Don L. Lee (Haki Madhubuti)?
The number of places and charity sales that might be interested in at least some of the books is getting ever smaller, as displayed by the demise of the Newberry book fair.
I don’t want the physical book to go out of fashion. But it's happening. I wish it weren’t so. It makes me sad.
Maybe this is an obituary after all.