The Late Age of Print: Everyday Book Culture from Consumerism to Control (review)

Is there an unprecedented crisis in book publishing? Are we in the midst of an extended and monumental change to the creation and distribution of a well-established and universal aspect of our culture: readership? Will some future generation of readers never experience the tactile, visual, and olfactory pleasures of a book, having instead as their only option the less aesthetic and more uncomfortable "electronic book" or perhaps audio or video versions?

According to Ted Striphas, the answers to these questions are emphatically negative. Working from an assumption that the bloody-minded self-assessments of the book-publishing industry may not be the most complete or least-biased view, he points out that data about contemporary practices of reading, writing, and selling books are open to differing interpretations. Striphas deemphasizes the "either-or" attitudes of much popular reporting about books and the book business. Without serving as apologist for any side, he uses the development and concerns of the twentieth-century book industry (publishers, sellers, and, to a lesser extent, consumers) to contextualize that of the early twenty-first century. The Late Age of Print is not an elegy for a means of communication, but a description of the conflicts and ironies of book creation and distribution in our time.

If there is now a crisis in book publishing, it seems that it is not the first one. The industry has characterized itself as under attack since books became mass-market consumer items. Striphas attributes that event to changes in marketing instigated in the 1920s and 1930s. Since then, the business models favored by publishing houses have always been trauma-inducing, in part because they expect consumer behavior that violates social norms. The onslaughts that have prevented the industry from achieving the heights it espies include paperback and other cheap editions, libraries, schemes to share books among readers, photocopiers, and the need for warehouse bookstores to sell books at extremely low margins. And, once profitability became a goal for all of the publishing industry, decisions began to revolve around possession: How much (money, market share, points on the best-seller lists) can we keep? How much can we keep away from others?

Is the United States at risk of becoming a nation of non-readers? Striphas analyzes some familiar counterindications of the demise of the reading public and, by inference, of books as desirable commodities. Again, he finds ambiguity in commonly reported events. These include the same big-box or warehouse bookstores that damage profit margins and overwhelm local independent shops, the Harry Potter "phenomenon," with information lockdowns that encourage piracy along with publication-date frenzies, and the national reading groups, like Oprah's Book Club, which turn a private act (reading and interpreting an author's work) into a far more public endeavor. Striphas's descriptions indicate that branding and marketing concerns are a source of conflict. Were the much-anticipated books in the Harry Potter series pirated and released ahead of time because the publisher used secrecy as a marketing tool? Who reads Oprah Winfrey's selections in their entirety, if she often apologizes for the choice (many pages, difficult words) and her presentations emphasize the author's "story" rather than themes and expression of the book itself? Do the big bookstores always cause a "Wal-Mart effect," or do they sometimes open the box on the independents and expose longstanding problems of haphazard management?

Striphas's underlying questions are very practical ones, focused on the materiality of books and control issues in the amalgamation of publishing-distribution-writing-reading. His discussion of popular electronic books and the machines to read them (such as the Kindle) again suggest that the object of the debate may be refocused, but the underlying issues are the same: piracy and unauthorized sharing, and discussions about inadequate formats that mimic arguments about paperback vs. hardcover books, all code for reduced sales. A critical aspect...