And you thought I was cranky. Periodically the Irishman sends me little news tidbits and I found this one amusing. Jonathan Franzen—and you know I love his work—was spouting off not too long ago about his distate for e-books. “I can spill water on [a paper book] and it would still work!” he says. There is that.

I love my Kindle, but, like Franzen, I still prefer my paper books (even though I am in constant danger of having a book-storage problem). Now I’ve discovered this delightful article by Irish journalist David Robbins that explains the dichotomy perfectly.

The fate of the printed book is a subject that keeps writers, publishers, and booksellers awake at night. Sales are falling, markets are shrinking, and the rise of the Kindle and other e-readers seems unstoppable.

Writers are ambivalent about this revolution. Jonathan Franzen, author of The Corrections and Freedom … hates the Kindle. … And Jodi Picoult has lamented the diminishing royalties that flow from e-books—basically, authors get a smaller percentage of a smaller download price. Booksellers don’t like e-books either because they have to buy the content from an aggregator first and then sell it on and the margins are too small.

And yet. And yet there are signs of hope. There seems to be a growing market for the book as an artefact in itself. People still want to own a handsome edition of something, with stitching, maybe, and nice hard covers.

For me it’s not either/or, it’s the right tool for the job. Jonathan, dude, I love you, but when did you turn into such an old fart?

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