Ah. Thanks. – I’d forgotten all about that bit of discussion, and had to go back through the up arrows in the quotes to get the context!
Stallman had his little story/article “The Right to Read” in 1996, but by that point the writing was no longer just on the wall, and he was simply describing reality.
Printed books aren’t going away, and they aren’t becoming collectible except for rare collected editions.
In 2020, 190 million e-books were sold in the U.S. In that same year 751 million printed books were sold in the US. Despite e-books being present for a couple of decades, they have yet been able to overtake physical print books, at least in the US. That’s an 80/20 split in favor of printed books.
That’s good evidence that printed books aren’t going away, but it does occur to me that “books sold” wouldn’t include public domain e-books that people are getting for free from sites like Project Gutenberg.
If the e-books in the public domain weren’t available, would those people go and buy a new copy from Barnes & Noble? Or would they find an already circulated copy from a used bookstore?
Either way, I highly doubt it’s significant enough to materially alter the 80/20 split.
One thing about collecting old books is that you find stuff you’d never have expected.
Before the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, dubbed a Century of Progress, a small publisher invited 20 top scientists to write short books for the general public about their specialties and sold them for a dollar each. The first of the Century of Progress Series, The Queen of Sciences by Eric Temple Bell, about math, has become a standard and been reprinted often. The rest are pretty much forgotten. I don’t think they exist as ebooks. I’m planning on writing an article on them because there is no other information on the internet.
So I’m buying the ones I don’t already own. One came with the original promotional bookmark that the publisher included with the book. Another has an obituary of the author pasted (“tipped in” as book nerds put it) inside the back cover. The back of the dust jackets list the entire planned series and update what’s forthcoming as the series was released over time, giving a time line that’s otherwise hard to get. (The LoC copyright dates and the books are at odds.)
No ordinary reader would care about these details, but they form a parallel source of history to scanned copies putting forgotten books into peoples’ hands. Used print books are just different from ebooks; they often can’t be swapped for one another. Both are good in their own ways and both are necessary in their own ways.
It also wouldn’t include hardcopy books taken out from libraries, bought at yard sales, and just passed around hand to hand.
If what we’re considering is only unique new copies, then those don’t count. But if what we’re considering is the overall popularity of reading hardcopy books, then they should.
Good point.