>One, books are no less a voguish medium than television or films; it's not just a coincidence that a bunch of people read Mailer at the same time, or that the best-seller list is mostly books that have gotten a lot of buzz recently, rather than timeless literary classics.
Books and tv series or movies have totally different tails of sales vs recentness.
Movies are mostly front-loaded (more recent = more views), tv series are almost totally front-loaded (some might watch 10 or 20 year old series, but not many will watch a 40 or 50 year old one, whereas for movies people do it more often).
Books, of course, are far more unrelated with recentness. There are books that are well read even today that are out of millennia, and anybody who considers themselves a literature reader has read works from the 20th and 19th century, and many from earlier times too.
Re:The Printed Word in Peril
by emodendroket on Friday September 28, 2018 @06:29AM
(#18092266)
Of course people do read old books. But I'm contending here that that is not most reading -- especially if we discount reading that is assigned.
One, books are no less a voguish medium than television or films; it's not just a coincidence that a bunch of people read Mailer at the same time, or that the best-seller list is mostly books that have gotten a lot of buzz recently, rather than timeless literary classics. Additionally, older books can be difficult to new audiences because of style (consider ancient books' long lists of genealogies, or their elliptical style, or consider the long-windedness of 19th-Century writing -- both can put readers off).
Further, the popularity of TV or movies is not solely determined by technical quality. Fewer people are watching shows that are a few years old now, or people are rediscovering 90s TV because it's added to Netflix and has a second wind. Consider also music. There's little technical reason to choose between Carrie Underwood or Loretta Lynn; both are easily available in high-fidelity digital format. Yet more people choose to listen to one than the other.