Are Books Really an Endangered Species? (Or Who the Heck is Cindy Weaver?)

Some people, like Cindy Weaver (the person quoted in these articles) would tell you that "the audience for books consists largely of the middle-aged and elderly while 'most people in their 20s and 30s... will tell you that books are so 20th-century.'" For this and other reasons, Weaver contends that "'there is every reason to think that books will be a thing in [sic] the past in the next 10-20 years,' to be replaced by multimedia stuff that places less and less value on text."

Weaver notes that "the vast majority of people who read books today do not find their information on books via the web. Most readers of books are 45-plus," then goes on to make that remark about books being "so 20th-century." Apart from the questionable assumption Weaver makes that old people don't use the Internet to find information on books (which the article calls her on), I'm really not sure what the heck that has to do with anything. I mean, I thought we were talking about reading books (which younger people are doing--I've seen it with my own eyes), not finding information online about them (which older people are doing--me being one of them).

Let's add to that the fact that I have no idea who Cindy Weaver is or why I should take her opinions seriously. Neither of the articles I've linked to in this post tell me anything about her or why I should care what she thinks. And while my casual observations don't amount to a scientific sampling, they do show that younger people out there are, in fact, still reading books. In fact, a commenter on one article pointed out that the Harry Potter phenomenon would seem to fly in the face of Weaver's position. I would follow that up with the popularity of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events books and countless other children's books, too numerous to mention.

While I fully recognize that the publishing business must adjust to new developments, such as the ebook, Kindle, Web publishing and all that, I suspect the rumors of print publishing's demise may be somewhat exaggerated. What say you?

Oh, and the proper expression would be "a thing of the past," not "a thing in the past." And you'd know that, Cindy, if you picked up a book now and then.