Economic Advantage Of Physical Books

Every new generation that is born in the United States always seems to read physical books less than the previous. For many students today, the only physical books that they will ever bother reading are those that they have been assigned to. However, that does not mean that they are reading less, as they spend most of their day reading text messages on their phone, or looking at status updates on social media websites. Even in the pursuit of knowledge, many would rather simply search for an article on the subject rather than read a lengthy book with more details. Such a reliance on the Internet to exchange information is bound to change some the ways that our society as a whole thinks. One work that dives deep into this issue would be The Shallows;

The economic advantages of digital production and distribution—no big purchases of ink and paper, no printer bill, no loading heavy boxes onto trucks, no returns of unsold copies—are every bit as compelling for book publishers and distributors as for other media companies. And lower costs translates to lower prices. (Carr 100)

Essentially, Carr states that physical books will see a decline due to the simple fact that it is more expensive to produce physical books on a massive scale than to simply publish the same work online. Because it is far less expensive to publish an e-book, the prices are also lower, which also increases the demand for e-books, while lowering the demand for physical books. It would not make any sense for a company to spend thousands printing books that are not going to sell because the demand for them is so low, encouraging the publication of e-books rather than physical ones. It may not be long from now that e-books become the most-widely used copy of books, while physical books become outdated and people who read physical books will look like they are reading from ancient

While discussing deep reading, or complete immersion in a book, Carr states, "Reading a book was a meditative act... Readers disengaged their attention from the outward flow of passing stimuli in order to engage more deeply with the inward flow of words, ideas, and emotions. That was—and is—the essence of... deep reading" (Carr 65). This form of reading which allowed for great movement in thinking may die out with the physical book. In The Shallows, Carr quotes Christine Rosen in her experience with e-books wjen he writes, " 'Although mindly disorienting at first, I quickly adjusted to the Kindle 's screen and mastered the scroll and page-turn buttons. Nevertheless, my eyes were restless and jumped around as they do when I read for a sustained time on a computer... Twenty minutes later I still hadn 't returned to my reading '" (Carr 103). This is common among people when reading on a computer screen. Many people find themselves constantly drifting away from the text, unable to focus on or soak in the text on the screen. If e-books were to become our only reading platform, then it will be harder for everyone to completely immerse yourself in the ideas of a text, which may lead to an end to intellectual movements as a