Have you ever watched those YouTube videos where they give children pieces of older tech, like vinyl records or Walkmans and ask them to guess what they were used for? It’s cute when they screw up their faces and “hmm and hawww”, right? Maybe also a little scary? Do you have visions of one day handing your great grandchild a book and getting a similar, confused reaction? Are you afraid that our beloved books are going the way of the dodo?
Well, we are not. That’s not to say that print media hasn’t taken a few lumps in the past couple of decades. It’s definitely been a rough go for our papery friends, but rather than panicking and stowing them away in hermetically sealed containers, we choose to take a different view.
Here’s why we don’t think books are in danger:
- Books have been morphing into different forms for as long as there have been books, and their demise has been predicted on many occasions. Predictions can be (and often are) wrong.
- Perhaps print books don’t sell like they used to, but they do still sell. Humans are still tactile creatures (especially the little ones we cater too), and the feel of an actual, physical book is still appealing to many. No, it is not yet time to give up on our human inclination to turn pages.
- The definition of the “book” has expanded drastically in the recent past, in a good way. There are a multitude of new genres (hooray for things like graphic novels, right?), but also all kinds of new formats. In our view, an eBook is still a book, including the interactive variety. An audio book is still a book. A projectable book is still a book. Some games and apps can even be considered books. All these new types of books still need to be written and illustrated, and in our case, narrated and programmed, and we absolutely love being part of their creation.
- “Book” may come to mean many different things as time goes on, but the demand for storytelling will persist. It’s part of what makes human. If social media is an indication of anything, it’s that we’re just itching to tell others our stories.
Long story short, we’re much more concerned about people being literate and engaged with words and ideas than about how these words and ideas are making it into their brains. As long as people are still keen to read stories, whether it be from a printed page, a screen, or through a pair of earphones, we’ll be happy campers, and we’ll endeavor to find new and innovative ways to provide for that.
However you define “book”, we hope you like reading ours as much as we like making them.