Is reading books still popular?
Actually the publishing of books has gone up dramatically–there are no reliable figures for sales available to the public, despite what others might say. Having been in publishing I know that this is private trade information. But we do know that more than 70,000 titles were published in English in the U.S. alone last year. And that this number has been going up steadily for at least the past four decades. By the way, since I think you believe the death of the book is imminent due to the internet, William Gibson, the bestselling science fiction author who came up with the concept of “cyberspace” in the early 80’s, was recently asked in an interview if he thinks the book is dead. He laughed and then reminded the interviewer that the book is a very old technology (albeit a discursive technology made up of a series of complex reading and writing strategies) over hundreds of years. “It’s not going anywhere,” Gibson said. And 70,000 titles proves his point. (Personally I think that the int
