Ebooks have been popular for decades and audiobooks are increasingly so. But physical books are still the decided favourite: a survey of Australian publishers after last Christmas reported print books made up a comfortable majority of sales (ebooks were 4–18% and audiobooks 5–15%). This is despite regular warnings about the death of the book.

Some critics of print books have even changed their tune. “We need to get over books,” wrote journalist Jeff Jarvis in a 2009 book calling for them to be digitised. “I recant,” he wrote in the Atlantic nearly 15 years later, in 2023.

Some readers like a print book’s sensory qualities: its feel and smell. For others, there is satisfaction in assembling a book collection. Like vinyl records, sales of which are also healthy, print books can be collected as valued objects to be cherished. Collections, and individual special books, can be admired, shared and displayed, in homes and on social media.

Books are used to communicate taste and class, from celebrity book clubs to a current trend for sharing lovingly annotated books on social media. Books signify reverence for culture – and bring it into domestic, accessible spaces. Earlier this year, Books and Publishing reported on a rise in “luxury” special editions of already published books. Romance author and academic Jodi McAlister calls them “a romanticisation of the physical object of the book”.

Print books in particular are carriers of history,........

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