The Book is Not Dead Because it Cannot Die. Now Shut Up about it and Move On.

The Book is not dead.

What’s dead is journalism.

And original thought.

Whenever you see the same damn headline 20 times a week, that only means modern journalism is lackluster.

Too lazy for a new story. And jacked up on melodrama.

Modern media simply retweet, reword, or re-link to other peoples’ thoughts, instead of expressing their own,

and things feel emphatic when you hear “the book is dead” 20 times a day in your Facebook and Twitter feeds.

One person says something these days, and 100 people echo it like gospel, until journalists sound more like

parrots repeating something, than people thinking about what they’re saying.

And when they say it over and over , “The book is dead, is dead, is dead …” it doesn’t make it 10 times more true.

Here’s what I know:

The Book is not dead, because there are too many people excited for the new Lynn Coady novel.

The book is not dead because I’m currently writing one.

The Book is not dead because I am reading one.

The book is not dead because there’s over a thousand books for sale in a store I drove past today.

The book is not dead just because a few bookstores closed. (A few groceries stores have closed too, and yet we all still eat.)

The death of the book is an illogical fallacy, and sloppy journalism on many fronts.

Here’s a few examples to back my claim, without me ever having read an article on the matter, for or against the notion the book is dead. It’s called logical reasoning:

But … Annual Sales Are Down (kinda!)

Of course sales fluctuate every year.

If you’re even slightly intelligent, you don’t take statistics at face value. You interpret them. That’s the basis of math and science: interpretation, not just reading the graph.

A perfect example of why sales can dip drastically: If a Harry Potter or a dreamy vampire book comes out and blows up in the box office in 2009 … of course books sales will be relatively down in 2010, because those 15 million kids who don’t read books anyway, didn’t all buy a copy of Twilight or Harry Potter that year, like they did the year before., so it looks like 15 millions less sales, when really, the rest of us are still clipping along and reading strong.

Another issue here: data is only as good as the method collection, and too many sales are omitted from these things, and some of them don’t even account for ebook sales, or independent bookstores. I even saw one graph for “national book sales” and in the fine print it was only 4 bookstores of the same chain.

Yes, annual sales fluctuate, but so do annual produce sales, or annual hockey viewership. Yet you never hear “hockley is dead!” or “The banana is dead!”

Nothing is stable and unwavering, not even marriage. Don’t expect book sales to be.

But All the Indie Stores Are Closing!

Of Course They Are! There’s an Indigo Chain, in the form of Chapters, Coles, or Smithbooks bullying them off of every block, with deep discounts and the promise of a Starbucks Frappa-Booyeah as you browse. Indigo bully publishers for God’s sake. Their kicking everyone’s ass. The cool bookshops don’t stand a chance against the prices they offer, and the modern shopper’s love of big box stores.

But Indie everything’s are closing. Not just bookstores. Walmart, for example, is killing the craft shops. Music stores have been slain by chains, restaurants too … it’s hardly a book thing. It’s a big corporation killing the little man thing.

Worse still is media acting like every bookshop that closes went bankrupt. Yet the owner tells any journliast good enough to interview them, “I’m retiring is all.” or, “I’m opening a new bookstore two towns over.”  That’s happened twice this year.

But Even Indigo Are Selling Fewer Books!

Yeah, on purpose too. Just this month they announced they’ll be stocking fewer books so they can sell more photo frames and greeting cards in their stores. WTF? That’s our Canadian bookstore monopoly? They send out a press release saying “we, a bookstore, will be sacrificing store space for couch pillows and coffee mugs.”

They’re selling less books because they’re stocking less. Or maybe because the modern shopper is going to indie bookstores to buy, or, online to buy, or direct from publisher, or a book launch, or maybe a bit of everything. Or maybe they’re pirating them. Who knows. Nobody, really. Except presumptuous reporters, of course.

Either way, I’ve never driven past Chapters and seen an empty parking lot. You?

Main Point: The Book is not Dead Because it Cannot Die

Books aren’t dead because they can’t die.

We’re not talking about a species here, like the Dodo, or a dinosaur.

We’re talking about human imagination,

about human passion, a hobby, a profession, a need to create.

And so long as there’s a way to type, there’ll be books.

What people really mean when they chant “The Book is Dead” is that sales, on the surface, appear to be down.

And God knows, at two bucks a pop for a book we slave over, none of us are writing, truly, for money.

What’s dying, if anything, is the way the industry works. And good riddance to that.

The methodology of the current book industry is prehistoric; the industry is a dinosaur, and I don’t know how it’s lasted this long.

Yeah, change is happening. But change isn’t book armageddon.

Did you know: We were monekeys before we were humans, and fish before that? And bacteria clung to heat vents in the ocean before that?

Good thing we evolved.

Change your headlines: “The book is evolving! (and don’t be afraid.)”

And the book itself is not going anywhere.

No matter what happens to the industry, or sales figures, there will always be  people like me — afflicted by what George Orwell refereed to as a disease — feeling the need to write a novel while their friends are on the beach, in rubber dinghies, enjoying life …

And there are more readers and bookclubs than ever, from what I can tell, and your claims can’t tell me otherwise.

And to the papers: How about, instead of doomsday filler in down times: An original thought. A nice word about a new book, because I’ve yet to see one publication attempt to cover everything as far as their budget will spread.

But the high-end rags will pay people to scream boo three times a week?

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