A New Book Look

For decades, fustier members of the nation’s literary establishment have predicted that new technologies would spell the death of intelligent books. But today--despite radio, TV, book superstores and online booksellers--book purchases are more robust than ever, with sales rising steadily above inflation rates. According to the Book Industry Study Group, the trade’s research and development arm, U.S. consumer expenditures on books, estimated at $23.9 billion in 1994 and $31.5 billion this year, will rise to $38.4 billion by 2004.

The latest causes for alarm, disclosed last week, are rival plans to sell digital books. Microsoft and Amazon.com will square off against Adobe Systems and Barnesandnoble.com.

E-books are a clear sign that the technical nature of bookselling is changing. They are likely to be popular because with no printing, inventory or delivery costs, their prices are low. For instance, an e-book version of Scott Turow’s novel “Personal Injuries” costs $10 if downloaded from Barnesandnoble.com, but the same volume in hardback costs $21.60, plus delivery, if ordered from the same Web site.

Still, e-books are unlikely to change age-old reading habits as fundamentally as their more breathless champions predict. Sushil Vachani of Boston University’s School of Management predicts that e-books will incite “radical change . . . as revolutionary as the printed word.” However, more sober analysts point out that while e-books may appeal to researchers and other nonfiction readers who value their unique ability to allow searches for words and relevant Web pages, their “value added” to fiction readers who don’t want to analyze their books like graduate students is far less clear.

This incipient reading revolution, along with the growth of superstores, has indeed dealt a possibly fatal blow to many independent booksellers, who steadily lost market share in the 1990s and continue to absorb hits, like the scheduled closing of the downtown Los Angeles branch of Dutton’s Books later this month.

There is no good side to the demise of independent booksellers, which has deprived Americans of the literate salespeople who used to “hand-sell” books, taking care to put the right book in the hands of the customer.

But in the long run, online bookstores and e-books, far from undermining literary diversity, may enhance it. Already they are giving book buyers unprecedented choice through huge virtual stores and nascent technologies like on-demand printing, which may give readers access to most of the 22 million books that have been published since the United States was founded--as opposed to the 1.8 million now in print.

The only conclusion that can be drawn from the rise of electronic publishing is that the hard-bound publishing industry will have to develop a more flexible spine, accommodating new types of book buying and selling as the pace of technological change accelerates.

However, since reading preferences are influenced less by cutting-edge technologies than by age-old human nature, there’s no reason why the story between the covers won’t stay the same.