sdl above mentioned the Wimpy Kid color coding. It struck me this week that the book designer was/is a genius. Even I, who have never read a Wimpy Kid book, have no trouble keeping the order straight (unlike with other series, like Cirque du Freak or Ranger's Apprentice or The Clique). Red, blue, green, yellow, purple. I can glance at the shelf any time to see if the one a kid wants is in. This is also true, to a more muted extent, of the Percy Jackson books (and the Lemony Snicket, back when those were popular). But the primary colors of Wimpy Kid really pop.

(BTW, I assume I'm not the only old person who keeps calling The Ugly Truth "The Awful Truth." I haven't bothered explaining to the kids that it's a Cary Grant movie; maybe I should.)

Do you suppose people had this same conversation when Gutenberg started printing? Think people reassured themselves that readers would always prefer an illustrated manuscript painstakingly copied by a monk?

People liked horses and yet switched to cars. People liked ocean liners but switched to jets. People liked vinyl but it's hard to carry a record player strapped to your arm when jogging. Nostalgia does not trump economics and convenience.

The price of digital will drop to a point half or a third of that of physical books and it will happen soon. Price matters.

What's needed — in addition to an end to denial — is a way for bookstores to participate in digital. The great weakness of digital bookstores is that the reader needs to come armed with specific choices in mind. Browsing digitally is not very satisfying. What's needed is technology that allows a physical bookstore to sell digital alongside physical books. As it is I may choose to browse a physical store to find a book and then go home to download it. Why can't I browse the physical books at the brick and mortar store and download right there from an in-store system? Why make it an either/or? I may want some books in paper and others in digital, and if bookstores are to prosper they need to find a way to provide both. (publishers should be looking at luxury bindings and enhanced ebooks.)

Even so the number of stores will drop but not as catastrophically as if they deny reality.

I did have a middle schooler when I was librarian at her school, who had our copy of The Witch of Blackbird Pond overdue for MONTHS– knowingly– she just didn't WANT to give it back. I actually offered to buy her a copy of her own, and she said, "No, I want THIS one!"

Dumpsters were brought in, and literally armfulls of books that were not in pristine condition were hauled off. The Children's collection had been built up over decades, and many of the books were out of print: folktales, myths and legends, biographies, original editions of picture and chapter books, etc.

The staff was forbidden to rescue the books. But we would grab as many as we could from the dumpsters, or those which we knew were doomed from off the shelves, and hid them.

After six months, the Interim Director was gone, and the books were secreted back into the collection (having never been Withdrawn in the first place, I suspect).

Our patrons never complained about old books. Many a child clutched our much loved copies of Ferdinand, Curious George, and the Clock Box Dragon, without caring if the corners were bent and the binding a tad loose.