Slate looks at how the design of printed books will evolve in the digital age:
Luddites can take comfort in the persistence of vinyl records, postcards, and photographic film. The paper book will likewise survive, but its place in the culture will change significantly. As it loses its traditional value as an efficient vessel for text, the paper book's other qualities--from its role in literary history to its inimitable design possibilities to its potential for physical beauty--will take on more importance. The future is yet to be written, but a few possibilities for the fate of the paper book are already on display on bookshelves near you.
From illustrations by William Blake and Gustave Doré to modern formal experiments like Tree of Codes and Nox, the author makes a great case for books as art objects as opposed to commodities:
...the paratextually unremarkable, unimaginatively designed rows of paperbacks and late-edition hardcovers that line most of our shelves...are headed for the same place most manufactured objects go eventually--the scrapheap.
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