are books going the way of music and movies?

A few decades ago, people were saying that the 21st century office would use no paper. But our offices now use more paper than every before, largely because of the proliferation of fax and copy machines (and, well, bureaucracy). People also said that books would be replaced with some sort of universal digital reader and that we would simply pay for the files. But more books are being sold than ever before (even if fewer people are actually reading them). While other concrete media, like CDs, films, and DVDs, are losing ground to file-sharing technology, the venerable old book sticks in there.

But not so for the new. While no one is dropping their books for portable media readers yet, the internet has expanded the market for lightly-used or "as new" books (as described in an article in this morning's Trib). It's a pretty good article, but it didn't point out that nearly all the terms of the debate are the same as those over file-sharing. The industry claims that authors aren't getting a fair deal. The consumers claim that the product is over-priced and that this is a more efficient way of doing business. This argument seemed especially familiar:

On the other hand, some say that when a book changes hands it could ultimately lead to new-book sales.

Said Powell, "Often a person becomes enamored of an author or a subject and starts looking for additional books by that author or on that subject. And their entry point is often a used book."

(Yes, that Powell.)

No matter how you feel about the subject, it seems like the complaints being uncovered by the "like new" market are worth considering. New books are too expensive. Publishing houses only push the books they know will sell (think summer blockbusters). Quality books have become more difficult to find (think indy media). What the "like new" problem shows is not that traditional media are threatened by new media technologies -- there is no new medium here at all. What's really happening is that a stifling market of over-consolidated corporations is being threatened by a reasonable market of independent distributors (and who knows, maybe publishers and authors will be next). As Lawrence Lessig might argue, the problem is not the new technologies, but a corporate order feeling the natural resistance that a fair market would accomodate.