Does anyone read books anymore? I recently went to the university Library I went to 15yrs back and I was shocked to see how few students were reading books. Most were on their laptops presumably reading from e books.

https://archive.ph/LoTdr

I would expect publishers to start promoting ebooks more as it moves consumer attention away from physical books, and the publishers should be able to format the pages, margins, lettering however they want. That is, if they have the foresight to do so and their workflows can handle it.

Good. I hope authors start writing more succinctly.

> The pleasure of a book that feels right in the hand—not too light or too heavy; pages creamy; fonts beetle-black—is something that publishers strive to preserve.

I am having some cognitive dissonance here.

I have hundreds of books in my pocket. Thousands if you count my O'Reilly subscription.

Nothing about them has changed because of inflation. Except maybe the price.

Yes, all my books "feel" about the same now. And if I don't like the way they feel - maybe because of the font size - I can adjust that for any book.

Here is what I am confused about. Nobody calls an old vinyl LP or a CD "music". No one calls a DVD a "movie".

Why is the idea of a "book" tied so closely to the physical medium it is printed on?

Yes, of course I realize that many people prefer those creamy pages and beetle-black fonts. And for some things I do enjoy the printed page.

But for the most part, I am happy that I have all my books handy on whatever device I'm using. I don't think any more of a book as being the printed word.

For what paper scarcity is concerned, the products of foremost (in quantity and name) publishers have already been pulp fiction level for a long time, compared to the offer in other countries.

For what text amount - which one cannot really write as "content amount" - is concerned, that is limited to some specific slices of the "market", e.g. what in some territories is called "literature for evasion". For that matter a piece of information run according to which the highest slice of market in the USA is of colouring books - but that just stretches the gap between "what a book could be" and the standard of "the codified way to convey information and wisdom". It is odd to speak about books and refer to "commissioned hypnotic material".