Ever since the first book was printed in 1455 by Johannes Gutenberg, the printed word has been celebrated by book-lovers and non-book-lovers alike. But with the progression of the internet today, the future of books in print has been a major subject to consider.

Do books have a future?

What is the future of books in print?
by Erin French

Dale Hohn, a self-employed fitness coach based out of Austin, Texas, feels that books in print have a challenger with ebooks, nooks and kindles, but that there’s nothing better than having an actual book in your hands.”When you turn each page and get lost in each chapter, you don’t get that same feeling from anything else,” said Hohn. “Even with the competition, I’m more than positive that I’m not alone in that feeling. Books in print are here to stay.”

Ute Hyde, a home health care assistant based out of San Antonio, Texas, also feels that the future of print will never diminish. “We need the books in print for history, for preservation, and also for our own enjoyment,” said Hyde. “You can’t simply preserve things forever on electronics; it can be wiped out by lightning, anything. Electronics are simple and cold, and there’s nothing like curling up with a book.”

Jeff Mabrey, owner of Rockin’ Tomato in Austin,Texas, believes that books in print may evolve similarly to how records evolved. “Records were a great sound source, but we wanted things to be easier and more efficient, so it kind of evolved into CD’s and then eventually into streaming,” said Mabrey. “But there were some characteristics, whether they were just from memories or from pure technology, that records actually sounded a little bit better. So, I think there will always be a place for books, but as a percentage, who knows.”

Caylin Doxey, a recent graduate of Anderson High School in Austin, Texas, feels that a lot of people prefer paper copies of books over electronic copies, and that a lot of that equates to a stronger connection to the book. “The internet and electronics seem like a really desensitizing thing in the way that users don’t really connect with the content and take it all for granted. People also seem to be a lot more critical of online content in a different way than they are of the physical copies of things,” said Doxey. “There’s this aspect of nostalgia readers get that correlates with holding a book in your hand and flipping the pages and feeling like a story is yours. So I think that nostalgia will potentially preserve the lives of books in print for an extended period of time, but with progressing generations being taken over by electronic versions of everything, it’s certainly fleeting.”