ABC's The Pitch Episode 6 asks two agencies to come up with a campaign persuading people to abandon their ereaders and return to print books. While neither ad is particularly convincing or original, the most glaringly obvious problem is that the campaign itself is based on a practically non-existent concern.

Reading paper books and ebooks are not mutually exclusive activities. You can, in fact, start reading ebooks and still return to print when you feel inclined to. It is possible, I promise.

There seems to be a common assumption on the part of print-apocalypticists that people are preparing to abandon print books en masse in order to have access to theoretically cheaper ebooks. I don't know what they think people will do with the books they already own: throw them on a bonfire as an offering to the god of ebooks, perhaps. In any case, this ignores the possibility that individuals are, in fact, capable of deciding whether print or digital is the most suitable form for a given text they intend to read.

A cursory glance at debates over the pros and cons of digital and print shows numerous reasons why people might go one way or the other. What people situated firmly on either side of the argument seem to miss is that different circumstances call for different forms of media consumption, and that people actually do experience different circumstances at different times in their lives. It seems weird and obvious to say, but at the same time it's something that is being ignored by people more inclined to view populations as being made up of consumer bots rather than actual human beings who do human being things on a regular basis.

By ignoring this in their 'real books are better' angle, The Pitch buys into a boringly simplified luddite view of how the publishing and reading world should deal with the rise of digital media, and misses an opportunity to engage in an on-going, world-wide discussion on the impact of said digital media on publishing (and marketing) that is happening, and is much more interesting than attempting to frighten and coerce people back into the fold of print. It's not going to happen. Digital media isn't going away, no matter how many heads are stuck in the sand. Nor is the print world in such dire straits as is sometimes suggested by the level of desperation that you see from anti-digital folks. But things are changing.

*disclaimer of sorts: The Pitch's episode dealt specifically with fiction, so this was really written with fiction work in mind. That said, the point I'm making works for non-fiction reading too.