Books are Cool Again

The song “Video killed the radio star” by Buggles was the first video to be played when the music channel MTV started broadcasting in 1981. The reference was supposed to allure to the fact that during the history of mankind new media has always overtaken old media.
During much of the 20th century, the advent of new media and entertainment channels have almost always been met with a cry of fear from bibliophiles everywhere. The book has been pronounced threatened or dead on many occasions for reasons ranging from Homo Modernicus’ frantic lifestyle to the very notion that the book itself is not flashy or cool enough, and that the book needed to reinvent itself.
Although these claims have been supported by empirical evidence of declining sales, it is surprising to see the list of the UK’s All-Time Most Selling Books, as compiled by The Guardian. It seems that books are still very relevant and entertaining. But it is not the classics that are being read. One has to go all the way down to 65th place on the list to find a book that was first published before the advent of the most entertaining medium of the 20th century: The Internet. The book in question is Harper Lee's "To kill a mockingbird".
Dan Brown tops the list with “The Da Vinci Code”, and seven of J.K. Rowling's books have made it in to the Top 10. So it should not come as too big of a surprise that no Nobel Prize winners are to be found on the list.
Though iPad’s, Kindle’s, Nook’s and other tablets have contributed to the renewed life in the publishing industry, these only account for 10% of total sales. The publishing industry will agree to the famous quote from American author, Mark Twain, that "The report of my death was an exaggeration". Unfortunately, the same can not be said for the sales of Mark Twain’s books.