Enough with the "end of reading" riff

Slate's sharp-witted book reviewer Laura Miller has read scads of articles and books declaring that "reading is dead" and she declares that she's had enough. The digital age has posed a threat to reading habits and changed the commerece of the book selling trade for good and ill, lets admit, but Miller wearies of the sad panic over the alleged end of literacy in our lifetime. Knock it off, she says , find another idea. It is perilous to declare any particular activity “dead,” given our previous attempts to wish away theater, painting, poetry, broadcast television, and even movies. They have been declared dead, individually and collectively, at various times over the decades, yet somehow they always rise from the coroner’s table and continue to thrive. Jazz is dead; vinyl records are dead; CDs are dead. People rely on statistics, polls, and other dubious databases to construct grand theories about why things supposedly become moribund, but other indicators contradict the claim that reading has ceased to be a social activity. 

Print book sales total around 707 million units, well above pre-pandemic 2019 levels, and represent roughly three-quarters of all book sales. Bookstores were also placed on the endangered-species list by futurists and were supposed to vanish. Yet, according to the AP, American Booksellers Association (ABA) membership has nearly tripled over the decade, reaching more than 3,400 members across over 3,700 locations—the highest level since the late 1990s. Independent bookstores remain under pressure, and margins are razor-thin, but there is obvious consumer demand. Reports of the death of reading are greatly exaggerated—a kind of make-believe in their own right.

There is a definite social movement among people who want to read entire books, as the rate at which new bookstores are opening has remained steady for quite some time. What readers are buying—self-help, romance, sci-fi, mystery, popular psychology, or celebrity biographies—is not especially relevant; attracting and retaining customers requires a broad, well-curated selection of categories. Margins are thin, but the bookstores that open are staying open. Sales at my bookstore are generally good—sometimes very brisk, at other times slower—but we remain a going concern. Those who purchase the books we specialize in—literature, science, history, philosophy, theater, poetry, music, and art—are indeed reading the many fine volumes they take home. The "reading is dead" trope is dead itself. It should be buried and remain that way, entombed.