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Publishers Killed the Paperback, Then Blamed Readers
(jacobin.com)
killed
Hmm.
Hyperbole? Conspiratorial thinking?
I get it. I became a reader later in life. I now realize that what held me back from reading the most was holding the book. I know it sounds dumb but hard covers are too heavy, and keeping a paperback open at the page was annoying. I read magazines, newspapers and comics without issue, but hard covers and paperbacks I could not handle. Now, with ebooks and a slim e-reader, I read about two to three books a week when I have spare time.
Also, I don't have the bookshelf space for the amount of books I consume.
I totally agree. That and text size. When I switched to ebooks, I immediately rediscovered the joy of reading.
I just found the opendyslexic font. I am not dyslexic, but I am getting older and that font is so easy to read. It's crazy.
Never knew this existed or that fonts were a part of the dyslexia problem.
Indeed easier to read and looks cool too. A bit retro
Why not just get the books for free from the library?
I borrow many ebooks from the library.
For me what makes a big difference is that on my ereader I can use ragged right with consistent spacing between the words, reading like that is much easier on the eyes than a printed book where they are trying to over-optimize for space, aka all text is justified & every book has a different font.
First things I do is disable hyphenation and switch to left alignment.
and I live in koreader on my kindles, so I can freely set everything stock kindle software doesn't want you to, such as margins + no need to use Kalibre to apply settings to epubs.
I’m not sure I agree this is making a difference in the recent downturn in literacy scores dating to around 2012. The books available in the drug stores, airports, and grocery stores have been the trash mass appeal types since I remember, but the publishers are still publishing plenty of variety and even if they stopped altogether there are a plethora of interesting books that already exist across the spectrum. I don’t think it makes sense for this to factor significantly into recent shifts.
The decline in bookstores seems a more reasonable guess since that cut off an access point for browsing a good variety. Maybe also the decline of mall culture which probably brought more casual browsers into bookstores than a standalone barnes and noble in a strip mall does.
If I were to look for causes explaining a reduced desire to read among kids I would look at whether parents are reading to kids less or maybe less likely to sign them up for library reading programs, whether districts/teachers are offering less variety of book options for their K-8 classes, whether reading programs at schools or libraries are offering less lucrative prizes or generally encouraging it less than they used to.
I read that Atlantic piece and think it has plenty of merit. I suppose that corporate decisions were made that made the paperbacks less attractive, but I still believe much of it comes down to the culture of aversion to reading long form text, preferring instead bite-sized diversions from our phones.
100% agree on this.
Publisher pooped on the cake, quite obviously, but the shift is real between people and books. and that shows no sign of slowing down.
That article was too long to read ;)
Yeah, it felt like it kept spiralling away from the point just to keep you reading longer, like one of those recipe sites that make you scroll past a dozen ads to get to the method.
this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2026
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