One Author Laments

I am lamenting the take-over of such things as cell phone books. Whatever happened to writing a book, having it edited, submitting it for publication, being rejected, trying again and again, and then publishing a real book with a cover and pages in between? I realize that many people, particularly young people, are so addicted to their cell phones that using any other type of media is foreign to them, but does anybody else find it sad that publishing is going the way of the world wide web and cell phones instead of hardcover copies that you actually have to hold and turn pages in order to read?

There's just something about holding an actual book in your hands, feeling the pages between your fingers, studying the cover and the title pages, dog-earing favorite parts, and smelling those pages. Learning to read from left to right, at least in America, begins when little children hold an actual published book in their hands and look at pictures, turning the pages from left to right and being read to by an adult. That is pre-reading, and without books, as many articles I've seen online are telling is a new trend--online media instead of the actual thing, I foresee a loss of literacy. Yes, we have huge amounts of information at our fingertips via the Internet, but literacy skills have really gone down in recent years.

I hope this isn't really the trend and that sometime in the future there won't be actual books. Because that will be a very sad day indeed.

P.S. How can you stand reading a book in a virtual format anyway? I like to hold it in my hands and be able to mark that page and memorize where certain passages are based on where they are on the page. I can't do that with virtual media.