Should we ‘get over’ print books in the digital age – or are they more precious than ever?
- Written by: Beth Driscoll, Associate Professor in Publishing and Communications, The University of Melbourne
Ebooks have been popular for decades and audiobooks are increasingly so. But physical books are still the decided favourite: a survey of Australian publishers after last Christmas reported print books made up a comfortable majority of sales (ebooks were 4–18% and audiobooks 5–15%). This is despite regular warnings about the death of the book.
Some critics of print books have even changed their tune. “We need to get over books,” wrote journalist Jeff Jarvis in a 2009 book calling for them to be digitised. “I recant,” he wrote in the Atlantic nearly 15 years later, in 2023.
Some readers like a print book’s sensory qualities: its feel and smell. For others, there is satisfaction in assembling a book collection. Like vinyl records, sales of which are also healthy, print books can be collected as valued objects to be cherished. Collections, and individual special books, can be admired, shared and displayed, in homes and on social media.
Books are used to communicate taste and class, from celebrity book clubs to a current trend for sharing lovingly annotated books on social media. Books signify reverence for culture – and bring it into domestic, accessible spaces. Earlier this year, Books and Publishing reported on a rise in “luxury” special editions of already published books. Romance author and academic Jodi McAlister calls them “a romanticisation of the physical object of the book”.
Print books in particular are carriers of history, knowledge and shared stories – as I’m learning through an ongoing joint research project into community publishing in regional Australia. And widespread horror at the destruction of books and libraries in Ukraine and Gaza reflects our collective knowledge that they represent culture itself.
Preserving community stories
With Alexandra Dane, Sandra Phillips and Kim Wilkins, I interviewed 27 self-published authors. Most of them wanted to create a physical book, rather than an ebook. For these authors, publishing a print book was important because it created a tangible record.
Our research showed people instinctively turned to the print format as the best way to preserve their memories and histories, and share these with other people in their communities.
Memorial to the Nazi-era book burnings at the Bebelplatz in Berlin, Germany.
Wikimedia Commons, CC BY
Because books hold culture, history, language, knowledge and stories, their deliberate destruction has a deep impact. In an opinion piece for the LA Times, cultural heritage researcher Laila Hussein Moustafa writes that “the destruction of libraries in times of war and violent conflict is tragically common”. She noted the attack by Bosnian Serb forces on the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992, and the looting of the Baghdad National Library in 2003.
What is at stake in such destruction, Moustafa writes, is libraries as “cultural repositories. They hold collective memory, preserve cultural heritage, showcase societal development and afford individuals the opportunity for learning and growth.”
This year, reporting on the destruction of Gaza’s libraries by the Israeli Defence Force, journalist Shahd Alnaami wrote that seeing images of books burning “felt like fire burning my own heart.” She continued:
The attacks on Gaza’s libraries are targeting not just the buildings themselves, but the very essence of what Gaza represents. They are part of the effort to erase our history and prevent future generations from becoming educated and aware of their own identity.
Part of the “heartbreaking reality” of the scale of the attacks on Gaza, Alnaami wrote, is that some of the surviving books have had to be burned by Palestinians for fuel. Novelist and academic Yousri al-Ghoul writes that on a day-to-day level, the tragic loss of culture is subsumed because “survival itself hangs in the balance”.
In May 2024, a Russian missile hit Ukraine’s largest printing house, killing seven people and injuring 21. The strike also destroyed 50,000 newly published books. It took place just a week before the Arsenal book festival, a popular event in Kyiv where many of the destroyed books were due to be sold. Burnt copies of the books were displayed among the new releases on show.
Print books can communicate something about who we are.
Print books may be burnt or absent. They may be shared in a community, held in a library, cherished in a home or shared online. In all these contexts, print books are vivid objects, reminders of culture’s precarity and its endurance.
Authors: Beth Driscoll, Associate Professor in Publishing and Communications, The University of Melbourne 
