The Printing Industry

Print books are a source of great fortune and have been around for many centuries. The printing industry expands as the need for new books and new methods of printing expands. With the development of ebooks, and various technologies that could ultimately replace the printing industry, there’s a question that will need answering in the future: when the last generation to use print dies, will print books die too? Book printing will eventually have dual “print” types: ebooks and regular hard or soft bound books, but the need for hard and soft copies may soon dwindle as electronic sources will be much cheaper.


The written word has existed since Neanderthal times. Stories and tales were first oral traditions before they were recorded on paper. The oral tales were handwritten at first by scribes, which limited the availability of these first written documents. The method was tedious, and the books were expensive and were only provided for the wealthy and universities. The first machine printed word in Europe was in 1455, when Johannes Gutenberg used his newly invented printing press to print a bible (“Johannes Gutenberg”).The printing press made books less expensive and allowed them to be circulated not only to the rich but to commoners. This changed society by allowing that no tyrant could hold the truth that would set people free, and kings, emperors, and dictators could no longer keep people in ignorance and virtual slavery (Sumner 413). By the turn of the 16th century, more commoners of the general public could read. Reading was no longer left to the wealthy and religious or educated men.


Printing made more information available for the people. People were not limited to what others told them. Literacy, as well as access to books, opened a whole new world of understanding. “More ambitiously, readerships, past and present, have been reinterpreted as the accumulation of many unique readings and not simply as aggregates of types of reader” (Raven 269). The unique readings introduced a new wave of literature, and “freedom” to write. The printing press published these new books in the current vernacular of the time, and books became more available. Those who wrote these newspapers or “pamphlets” made a healthy living, but the content of these papers were factual reports, and there was no explanation or commentary nor was any context of what going on or prediction of likely outcomes (Pettegree 14-15). Even though the common people had the ability to read, there wasn’t any substance in what they were reading in the pamphlets until people started reading other forms of literature. When more people could read, and more people started asking questions, the content in the pamphlets changed.


In recent times the printed text has been widely used, especially for education and religious purposes, like bibles and textbooks. “For nearly two-thirds of this century, the industrial revolution, primarily through technological advancement, mechanization and specialization were pacemaker in output, profits and productivity” of books (McCormick 393). The printing industry increased in popularity, mostly in the 1900s, and productivity of books has been increasing as the need for new information became more demanding. The Technical Association of Pulp and Paper Industry brought together experts to share information and to discuss the concerns about productions and preservation of paper (Magnuson and DeCandido 181). Since currently documents are being transferred into digital formats and print copies are becoming less frequent, this organization is trying to save these print documents. Digital copies can be found on any Website online or in ebook format. Print books are no longer needed, and digital copies are even cheaper than the printed ones. The generations of the late 20th and early 21st centuries are used to having digital copies, and even older generations are slowly transitioning. Print books are still in existence, but new books will be more readily available and cheaper in digital form than print copies.


The real question is if these print books, and the printing of newspapers and other forms of information that generally use print, will continue to be made and used as the digital age rises. According to a study on library spending, libraries have been switching to the digital copies, spending four percent of their materials budgets on ebooks in 2010 and six percent by 2012, with a projected increase of eight percent by 2016 to be spent on ebooks (Planka 44). Librarians are interested in expanding book availability before libraries eventually will no longer be needed since most books are available online and access provided by other free services. “The survival of libraries will depend on their ability to take advantage of ebook technologies to deliver new kinds of value, even as competitions arise in the delivery of their traditional services" (Hellman 23). The traditional services provided by libraries don’t seem to be used as often as it may have been in the past, making it seem as if people have stopped reading, but it’s exactly the opposite; since books are available digitally and online, more people are reading.


The amount of time people spend reading has almost tripled since 1980. By 2008 more than a trillion web pages were added to the World Wide Web, and that total grows by several billion a day (Kelly). The availability of books is great for those who can’t make it to the library to read the book, nor pay for the printed book in stores. The benefits of print books are great, but “[p]rinted versions of [books] are dying as fast as music CDs once did” (Nesbit). The most notable changes from switching to digital format can be found in bookstores. Borders have closed many of its stores, and Books-A-Million has only been able to survive the digital age because of the introduction of the Nook – a digital reading device similar to the Kindle. This change has allowed stores to stay open for the printed word. Another change can be seen in schools, most importantly in colleges that are taking advantage of digital books, which are exponentially cheaper than the hardcover or even leaflet book editions, and ebooks hold a variety of options, from use in online courses to online in-text help and frequently asked questions.


Librarians will enjoy how former senior Kindle program manager at Amazon Jason Merkoski waxes poetic about how lovely books are and how valuable reading is to culture, but librarians may be surprised that a digital book manager spends more time talking about print books than it does e-books (Vnuk 4). This seems counterintuitive, but Merkoski could be trying to give the printed word more popularity by using his ebook franchise to his advantage. Even though the digital age is rising, there are methods that some companies, such as Books-A-Million, are taking to ensure that print books will continue to last. “What [George] Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What [Aldous] Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book” (Postman xix), which is a great fear indeed, and without the proper methods of preserving print copies, could prove the end of the printed book. It’s easy to see that books have lost popularity; even when Neil Postman’s social commentary Amusing Ourselves to Death was written in 1985, printed books were predicted to be gone by the 2000’s or lose popularity as the interest in TV engaged the world’s favor.


Books are a safe haven, an adventure, filled with information, but more importantly, the feel of having a book in the hands is a feeling that is unmatched. Holding a book has a weighted feel that is metaphorical, and those who were raised with books but are now exposed to the digital age feel the difference. The need to preserve books is becoming a priority at the same time authors, companies, and libraries are attempting to immerse themselves in the digital age so they have continued financial success. Some companies, such as Borders, have already closed because of their delayed response to this new age, while others have blossomed – such as Amazon. The future of print books doesn’t seem clear, but it could be assumed that eventually, the future production of printed material will decline significantly with current use or technology.

Works Cited

Hellman, Eric. “Libraries, Ebooks, and Competition.” Library Journal 135.13 (2010): 22-23. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 4 Feb. 2015

"Johannes Gutenberg and the Printing Press." Gutenberg & the Early History of Printing (2009): 1. History Reference Center. Web. 2 Feb. 2015.

Kelly, Kevin. "From Print to Pixel." Smithsonian 41.4 (2010): 122-128. History Reference Center. Web. 2 Feb. 2015.

Magnuson, Nancy, and GraceAnne A. DeCandido. “From Print to Pixels.” Library Journal 114.3 (1989): 181. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 4 Feb. 2015.

McCormick, Thomas F. "The Printing Industry." Vital Speeches of the Day 41.13 (1975): 392. History Reference Center. Web. 2 Feb. 2015.

Nesbit, Jeff. “Will the Printed Word Survive in the Age of the Internet?” LiveScience. Purch.com. 4 Sept. 2013. Web. 2 Feb. 2015. http://www.livescience.com/39427-will-printed-word-survive-on-web.html

Pettegree, Andrew. "Print, Politics & Prosperity." History Today 64.2 (2014): 11-17. History Reference Center. Web. 2 Feb. 2015.

Planka, Sue. “An Ebook Primer.” Library Journal 137.6 (2012): 42-44. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 4 Feb. 2015.

Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves To Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. New York: Penguin Books, 2006. Print.

Raven, James. "New Reading Histories, Print Culture and the Identification of Change: The Case of Eighteenth …" Social History 23.3 (1998): 268. History Reference Center. Web.   2 Feb. 2015.

Sumner, G. Lynn. "The Printing Press." Vital Speeches of the Day 6.13 (1940): 413. History Reference Center. Web. 2 Feb. 2015.

Vnuk, Rebecca. “Burning the Page: The Ebook Revolution and the Future of Reading.” Booklist 109.22 (2013): 4. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 4 Feb. 2015.