So, why aren’t books dead yet? It helps that e-books are booming. Kindle and nook have begun to refashion the economics of the medieval publishing industry: no trucks, no paper, no returns or remainders.
But that does not explain why writers write them. Writers write them for reasons that usually have little to do with money and not as much to do with masochism as you might think. There is real satisfaction in a story deeply told, a case richly argued, a puzzle meticulously untangled.
Bill Keller - Let’s Ban Books (Or at Least Stop Writing Them) - NYT Magazine July 17, 2011
