Week 16 Prompt Response

“To read a story well is to… become it…” (Le Guin, 2008, p. 36). This beautiful sentiment from Ursula Le Guin embodies my experience with reading which started at a young age on my mother’s lap. Probably because my mother read to me so often, reading has always been a part of me which I have cherished sharing with my own children.

I largely grew up in the 1980s, before the internet and long before tablets and e-readers. Libraries were still mostly about books and reading, and my family checked out many library books over the years. I typically had a stack of books near my bed and read almost entirely realistic fiction by authors like Beverly Cleary, E.L. Konigsburg, and Ann M. Martin (yes, I was prime Baby-Sitters Club age). Reading competed against many fewer distractions during that time period, although I watched plenty of TV and played my fair share of Atari and Nintendo. (I didn’t have an actual cell phone until after college… so, you could say that times have changed.)

I still have stacks of books by my bedside, but I now read most of my books on my Kindle. Most of these books are borrowed digitally from the library, but I will occasionally purchase an e-book from Amazon. The stark difference between downloading a book on my tablet vs. going to the mall in the 1980s to buy a paperback book is probably the biggest change to occur for reading and books in my lifetime. The mall doesn’t even have a bookstore anymore. And the idea of downloading a digital book would have sounded like science fiction to me as a child...and I didn’t like science fiction!

Traditional publishing is big business that has adapted with the times; it’s not going away anytime soon. The advent of the e-book rocked the publishing world for a while, and likewise the library world. Libraries struggled with publishers to find fair pricing models based on users, annual terms, and circulation. Le Guin (2008) talks about how publishing is driven by sales, and I don’t see this changing in our capitalist society. Publishers will still gravitate towards sales over quality, and I’m sure that means that we as reading consumers sometimes miss out on great books. Perhaps because of this, Amazon has seen self-publishing grow, and while it still may not be a lucrative business it has allowed for some authors to become noticed by the big publishers.

The good news is that people still love to read, and Publisher’s Weekly indicated in October 2018 that print book sales for the year were up 2.5% over the same time period in 2017. With adult nonfiction sales up and adult fiction slightly down, juvenile fiction and nonfiction were both up and board books were up 10%. Although the powerhouse of young adult fiction was down in 2018, the increases in juvenile numbers and board books helps me remain positive about reading overall going forward.

Staff at Wired (2018) state, in the introduction to their “How Technology Shapes the Way We Read” series, that “people are adapting” to changes in reading. Will there be an unforeseen new technology in the next 20 years that again changes the way we read and consume knowledge? I don’t have an answer to this, but whatever it is I’m ready to try it out!

References

Le Guin, U. K. (2008). Staying awake: notes on the alleged decline of reading.Harper’s Magazine, 316(1893).

Print Unit Sales Up in 2018 to Date. (2018, October 5). Retrieved from https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/78257-print-unit-sales-up-in-2018-to-date.html

Wired Staff. (2018, August 04). How We Read: A Survey of the Ever-Shifting Landscape. Retrieved from https://www.wired.com/story/how-we-read-introduction/