The End Of Pulp And Paper Is Near. What Happened?

We seem to be on the closing end of a long era

. In a few short years, perhaps no more than a decade or two, we'll likely see for the most part the end of the printed word on organic materials. With the advent of eBook readers such as the Kindle, Nook and others, more and more people are turning to electronic media for their reading pleasure.

And new technologies are coming soon. China has encouraged newspapers and periodicals to use the newly developed e-reader, which is as thin as paper, can fold up, and is able to display text and images. It may be that soon one can get "delivery" of their newspaper via Wi-Fi, and still be able to roll it up and stick it in a purse or a bag.

If you go back far enough, after stone tablets, clay tablets, wax tablets, vellum or parchment (animal skin), we developed systems of creating paper from linen, papyrus and other plant fibers. Then we recycled cloth into paper (hence the old term "rag content," which determined paper's quality) until we finally settled on using tree pulp to make paper. Pulp is basically wood chips broken down mechanically and chemically into fibers to use as the material for pressing into paper products. Today we produce nearly 200 million tons of paper each year.

The printed word developed from pictograms and hieroglyphics into various alphabets. Our current system came from the Greek alphabet.

The alphabet may have developed initially to be used for record keeping in trade as cities grew and populations became more centralized. But storytelling has always been a part of cultures throughout history, and at various points in their history different cultures began to record their stories rather than relying on memory and oral tradition. So today we have bookstores and libraries as an integral part of our society, and plenty of fiction to keep us entertained.

Now it looks as if the printed book could be nearing the end of its long cycle, as the trend moves rapidly toward electronic methods of distributing the written word in media and books.

Methods of creating mass readership of fiction tales started with the birth of the serial in New York in the 1850s, with stories being serialized in newspapers such as the Evening Post and The New York Ledger. This eventually transformed into the standalone dime novels made possible by advances in printing in the 1860s. And this evolved into the cheap pulp paper magazines born in 1882 (thus the term "pulp fiction"), starting with Argosy magazine, which eventually inspired countless other publications reaching millions of American readers each month up through the 1950s. So yes, now it truly seems that the tried-and-true paperback novel is about to be become extinct as well, all but wiped out by electronics.

The market for electronic books is growing by leaps and bounds. Currently, one in four Americans own an eBook reader or tablet. Recently Apple initiated a program to replace printed textbooks in classrooms with digital ones. It's even possible to borrow an eBook from your local library now, a trend that appears to be growing.

Another big advantage in today's economy is that eBook prices are far lower than those for printed books, especially if one is used to buying hardcover editions. It's also instant gratification, since one can be reading in minutes, rather than waiting days for a printed book to arrive from an online order, or hours in the case of running out to the local bookstore or library.

So, in a decade or so, when your kids or grandkids, who may never have picked up a printed book, look askew at you when you talk about your favorite paperbacks, or you try to explain to them what "pulp fiction" is, you'll have an idea of how to answer them.

by: Lee Barwood

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