[Image /Artwork: designslinger]

I've read a couple of articles in the past two weeks about how younger people aren't reading
books anymore. This Sunday's issue of the New York Times and an article from this month's Atlantic Monthly magazine.

[Image: Gutenberg Bible, wikipedia /Artwork:designslinger]

It's somewhat disconcerting to consider that kids two generations behind me may never pick up
an actual book to read. I'm not sure that it will make for a dumber population (I mean can we get any dumber than we already are?!), I'm just thinking about the loss of great book jacket cover art and design. Even though I am writing a blog, and hope people will read it, I am a voracious book reader, and don't believe one kind of reading excludes another.

[Images: Book jacket covers, 1920s-30s, NYPL Digital Gallery /Artwork: designslinger]

We hear about the demise of the print newspaper industry, and the closure of independent
bookstore after independent bookstore. And, though millions of books are still sold every year, even the major conglomerates are having a tough time. I suppose all the artists and designers who create book covers and layout page copy, could migrate to the web, but our eye will not translate the information from the computer screen in the same way it perceives ink on paper.

[Image /Artwork: designslinger]

I guess I'm showing my age, and I can't see into the future, but if book publishing becomes an
entirely cyberspace venue will there be a need for the ubiquitous cover? Certainly a web page can open with cover art, but will the reader of tomorrow really care, or will they just want to get to the story along with thousands of pop-up windows containing the web version of Cliff Notes.

I'm not sure I will live long enough to see the end of the book as we know it today, but I never
thought I'd see the possible demise of the print edition of the daily newspaper.