For about fifteen years, the internet argued about whether the e-reader would kill the book. There were think pieces. There were people who said they’d never give up the smell of paper, as though paper were a person. There were other people who said the holdouts were sentimental fools clinging to dead trees. Every bookshop had a sign. Every Christmas had a column.
The argument is over. Nobody won. Everyone I know has both, uses both, and has stopped mentioning it, which is how every war actually ends: not with a treaty, but with everyone quietly getting on with their evening.
The terms of the peace
Having conducted a survey of one household and several friends who were trying to read, here is how the territory has settled.
The Kindle gets: thrillers, romantasy, anything in a series past book two, anything you’d be embarrassed to be seen with on a train, anything read in bed with the lamp off, anything read in the bath, anything read at 2 a.m. after “one more chapter.” The e-reader’s great gift is not convenience. It’s the removal of judgement. Nobody knows what you’re reading. Nobody can see the cover. The dragon man is between you and the device.
The hardcover gets: the books you’ll reread, the books you’ll lend and want back, the books you want on the shelf so that people visiting understand who you are, cozy mysteries with good spines, anything with a map, and anything you’re reading in the chair, because the chair is a hardcover chair. Everyone knows this. The chair has rules.
Paperback is a free agent, used for travel and for books that fell apart from love.
Audiobooks have their own department (the kitchen, the walk, the drive) and have agreed not to interfere.
The one remaining dispute
Where the bookmark goes. The e-reader remembers your place. The hardcover does not, and the hardcover people have strong views about what you may put in it: a proper bookmark, a receipt, a train ticket, never a dog-ear, never, and this is a hill, never a pen. There’s a reason the only object on this site that isn’t printed is a bookmark. It’s the last piece of equipment the physical book still requires, and people have opinions about it the way they used to have opinions about formats.
Why the war ended
I think it ended because the question was wrong. “Which is better?” assumes you’re one reader. You aren’t. You’re six, depending on the hour: the bath reader, the train reader, the chair reader, the lamp-off reader, the lender, the collector. Each one wanted a different thing from the object, and once the objects were both cheap enough to own, each one got it.
What’s left is the thing that was always underneath the argument: people wanted to read more, and were worried something would stop them. Nothing did. The e-reader didn’t kill the book. The book didn’t shame the e-reader. The number of books read in this house went up, because now there’s one in every room.
A field note
Last Tuesday I read a thriller on the Kindle in the bath, then dried off, came downstairs, and picked up the hardcover that lives on the chair, which is a 1950s mystery with a cracked spine, and read it until the cat took the blanket. At no point did I think about formats. I thought about the vicar. That’s the peace. It’s quiet. That’s how you know it’s real.