Young readers prefer printed books – By Cory Doctorow

“A new book called Words Onscreen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital World cites surveys that say that young readers increasingly prefer to read books from paper, not screens. More than that, though, they find ebooks and printed books complementary. Printed books are good for protracted reading and comprehension. Ebooks are good for subsequent reference and convenient access. I started arguing this in 2008, and it certainly reflects my own experience. The future composts the past. The advent of films made it possible for performances that couldn’t work onstage to be born and it moved all the plays that were uncomfortable fits onstage to the screen. What it left behind were plays that were more like plays — and a theater industry that’s still going strong, even if it’s dwarfed by the screen. By the same token, books are becoming more booklike. Books that work best as ebooks — for example, big reference books; but also short works that are too slight to rest comfortably on their own between covers — are moving to ebook-land. Things that are produced as printed books have passed a test in which someone has asked, “Is there an important reason for this to exist in print, instead of exclusively onscreen?”