Why Physical Books and Records Are Making a Comeback (With the Numbers)

Are books physical media?

Physical media is any work you own as an object rather than as access: a printed book, a vinyl record, a CD, a DVD, a cassette. The question gets asked because "physical media" is usually said about film and music, where the alternative is streaming. Books belong in the same category for the same reason — the alternative to a printed book is a licence to display text on a device, and the licence can be changed, withdrawn or made unreadable by the next device. The book on the shelf cannot.

Is physical media making a comeback? The numbers

For records, without argument. The RIAA's 2024 year-end report put US vinyl revenue at about $1.4 billion, up for the eighteenth year in a row, and vinyl has outsold CDs in units every year since 2022 — the first time since the 1980s. For books, the comeback is quieter but real: US print unit sales have stayed near 780 million a year since 2021 (Circana BookScan), above the pre-pandemic level, while e-book revenue has been flat or falling for a decade. The formats that faded — DVD, CD — are the ones tied to a player that stopped being made. A book needs no player; a record needs a turntable that has not changed in fifty years.

Why people go back to objects

A beginning and an end. Opening a book or lowering a stylus starts something with a defined length. A feed does not end; a side of a record does, after about twenty minutes, and you get up. People who say vinyl "sounds better" are often describing this — the ritual, not the frequency response.

Ownership. A book or record you own stays in your home until you sell, lend or give it away. Digital access depends on the service, the licence, the device and the account, and every one of those has been withdrawn from someone at some point. Physical copies can be damaged or lost, but the decision is yours.

A visible collection. A shelf is a record of attention. It holds favourites, mistakes, gifts and phases that no longer fit together, and that irregularity is the point — a recommendation list shows what an algorithm thinks you want now; a shelf shows what you actually returned to.

The comeback comes with a storage problem

Every object you own has to live somewhere, and the two formats that came back are the two that punish careless storage. A record left leaning in a half-empty crate warps within months; a row of books with nothing at the end slides into a pile. The rules are short. Records stand upright, on edge, in their sleeves, supported along the whole face, out of direct sun and away from radiators — the Library of Congress guidance, not ours. Books stand upright too, with a bookend heavy or well-footed enough to hold the row, and the oversized art books lie flat. Use one filing rule you can keep; alphabetical by author or artist survives four hundred items, most other systems do not.

We have made the furniture for both since 2011 in Cherkasy, Ukraine: laser-cut and plaster bookends, and hand-welded steel stands, crates and carts for records. Two pieces that suit a collection at the stage where it has just outgrown the box: