Ten years ago, as Jeff Bezos launched the Kindle ereader in New York, he declared that “the book is so highly evolved and so suited to its task that it’s very hard to displace”. Amazon’s founder was right: this spring, despite the digital upheaval unleashed by the Kindle, it will open a bookstore in Manhattan.
There are signs of the book’s renaissance all around. Waterstones, the UK book chain, returned to profit last year after suffering six years of losses. Sales of print books in the US rose by 3 per cent, while those of ebooks have fallen. Digital technology has not unleashed the same revolution in publishing that it has for music, television and news; we still like to read books.
The book’s enduring popularity is widely hailed as a heart-warming tale of traditional values triumphing over cold, hard technology. This is not the whole story, however. It can equally be read as the narrative of Amazon’s growth: if you cut prices, people buy more and if you raise prices, they buy less.