Dire predictions have been made for well over fifteen years that digitization will replace printed books. It’s just a matter of time. And a matter of screen legibility and the portability of ebook readers. With the Amazon Kindle and Apple’s recently-launched iPad, it will be interesting to see what happens to books on paper. For some readers, and certainly for readers-on-the-move (meaning people, not devices), ebooks have an obvious advantage over conventional books. On the other hand, the tactile aspects of some books may not be better served by ebooks. I’m thinking about the kinds of books we buy to keep—books produced with attention to format and materials—for the pleasure of having and handling a beautiful object.

In his fascinating book, A History of Reading, Alberto Manguel writes “At the end of the 15th century, even though printing was by then well established, care for the elegant hand had not died out, and some of the most memorable examples of calligraphy still lay in the future .... It is interesting to note how often a technological development—such as Gutenberg’s [printing press]—promotes rather than eliminates that which it is supposed to supersede, making us aware of old-fashioned virtues we might otherwise have either overlooked ....” A HISTORY OF READING, ALBERTO MANGUEL, PENGUIN, 1997

Maybe, just maybe, there will always be books made with cloth, paper, and pigment.