From a New York Times article by David Streitfeld, a reminder that paperback books, now endangered by digital books, were once themselves considered a disruptive technology:

“Penguin and Random House were innovators who made paperbacks into a disruptive force in the 1940s and ’50s. They were the Amazons of their era, making the traditional book business deeply uneasy. No less an authority than George Orwell thought paperbacks were of so much better value than hardbacks that they spelled the ruination of publishing and bookselling. ‘The cheaper books become,’ he wrote, ‘the less money is spent on books.’ Orwell was wrong, but the same arguments are being made against Amazon and e-books today. Amazon executives are not much for public debate, but they argue that all this disruption will ultimately give more money to more authors and make more books more widely available to more people at cheaper prices, and who could argue with any of that? This was not a prospect that many on Wednesday were putting much faith in.”