The print industry has been dying for a hot minute. People have been buying up magazine and online subscriptions in favor of printed words for the better part of 15 years. It’s not even a secret. It’s been an open issue that has roiled almost every writer.

Magazines, particularly mainstream ones, have been shutting down at a breakneck pace. In Touch, Life & Style, Paper, and OK! Magazine have all shut down in recent years. Most local print papers are also struggling to keep their prints alive. 

Of the mainstream magazines and papers still alive, most are recycling old news at best — and purchased by vultures at worst. Such was the case with the Asbury Park Press, which now belongs to Gannett. 

With certain mainstream news-stand fitness magazines, the going process is to recycle old news stories (such as workout plans and health tips) and just pepper in new articles as necessary. Then, they just jumble everything around and add new photos. 

Magazines like these have a skeleton crew running them, often as little as one or two people per month. It’s a fact that I found out from someone in the mainstream media world. Many of the stories you read there are just AI slop, which honestly shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. 

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Around 2020, something strange started to happen. People started to request print versions of books over their digital forms. In recent months, more and more people have started to clamor for printed news, books, and media. 

Having a bookshelf is now considered a “green light” for most people in the dating market. Some folks, myself included, won’t seriously date someone if they don’t have a bookshelf filled with books. 

Even among young people, handheld books still reign supreme. A recent study revealed that 80% of Gen Z’s literary purchases were print books — though they clearly don’t shy away from online material as well. 

Books, books, books. They’re being demanded at increasing numbers. More shockingly, people are now specifically asking for niche magazines in print form — often as collectors’ pieces. 

You know, I could wax poetic about how holding a book is a nice feeling or how books look good on shelves, but there’s more to this than meets the eye. It’s not just about aesthetics. It’s about something bigger happening. 

Imagine that you’re reading a book that you got with a subscription, a monthly one that unlocks tons of books for the price of one. Yay! You’re halfway through…then you get locked out. 

For one reason or another, you ran out of money to afford said book subscription. It’s going to be another week before you can pony up the money. You’re pissed, right? 

Subscription fatigue is a thing. People are getting so sick of monthly charges for media that they are actively turning away from subscriptions in favor of solid, old-school, handheld options. 

After all, a book won’t close itself if you don’t pay up $15.99 a month. Meanwhile Amazon might. 

Did you notice how many platforms started to randomly tout right-wing bullshit as “top sellers?” Or how many platforms seem to push down leftist publications? You’re not alone. 

Growing concerns over censorship are making people think twice about internet use. In fact, people are starting to say that Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) and TikTok are now starting to muzzle talk about ICE, the Epstein files, and more. 

So far for “free speech,” right?

Book bans are also starting to spike, especially in schools. Typically, this would lead people to go to libraries to get the books they want. However, this is also starting to see problems. Groups like Moms for Liberty have been actively pulling books off library shelves and refusing to return them so that access get cut off. 

Moreover, if you “bought” a book on Amazon, then that doesn’t mean it’ll always be there. If the government (or Bezos) decides that something is too spicy, they can remove it from your library and you wouldn’t even get a warning sign. That’s the danger of censorship and corporate interests.

As it gets harder and harder for people to find censored materials online, people are starting to realize the importance of print. After all, print books can be hidden, stored, or otherwise preserved from bigots.

Going hand in hand with censorship is the feeling of reality melting. Or rather, feeling gaslight by all the gaslighting and moving goalposts you’ve been seeing in the news.

10 years ago, most Republican voters would have balked at the idea of ICE camps. They also would never have been okay with defending pedophiles like Jeffrey Epstein or his cohorts. 

Today, we’re starting to see GOP voters talk about how they would let Trump hurt their kids. We’re starting to see GOP voters say that pedophilia isn’t that bad or trying to normalize it — things unthinkable only 2 years ago.

If you’re like me, what you’re seeing in your day-to-day life doesn’t match what the mainstream media is peddling. It feels like reality is melting, doesn’t it? Like, every time you look around, you could have sworn that the media was saying something else.

Welcome to post-truth mainstream media. It’s meant to feel that way. 

Books and other print media are great because they are permanent. They can’t be edited overnight, so if “facts” change, it will require a reprint. Printed media, therefore, is an anchor to reality — a way to show the OG reports back in the day. 

In that sense, books can ground you into reality and also help you spot when and where goalposts move. When you think about it that way, it’s little wonder that more and more people are requesting solid books and zines over digital formats.

Yes and no. 

On one hand, the new resurgence of demand for printed materials is going to change things up. The demand for books never really went away. After all, Barnes and Noble has been seeing an uptick in sales and visitors. 

Moreover, a growing number of people have started to request print versions of publications — but with a catch. The publications that are seeing the most demand are niche magazines, comic books, and collectible cards. It wouldn’t shock me if printed porn will soon get the same treatment.

So yes, there is a resurgence in print that might very likely stay that way for decades. Now that books and magazines are being pulled off the shelves when we need them the most, people are absolutely interested in getting print versions. 

In the past, mainstream media was the be-all and end-all of media. If you were able to clinch a story in Vogue or The New York Times, that was it. You were GOLDEN. These were the magazines that made the careers of those who were featured in them. 

Heck, mainstream media was what basically narrated the public’s collective mind. If mainstream media said something was good, it was golden. If mainstream media said something was bad, people hated it just to hate it. It dictated trends, stardom, even buying patterns.

We all still get news from AP or The New York Times, but it’s no longer the be-all, end-all of the common psyche. People no longer trust mainstream media because it’s been so blatantly compromised by billionaire interests. I mean, who wants to tune into the equivalent of “newsy” infomercials and propaganda?

Indie journalists and bloggers are now quickly becoming the go-to news source. Therein lies the rub: indie bloggers are quickly split the mainstream consensus into a million different little splinters, making everything niche. 

There are now two main media spheres: leftist and fascist. They’re almost entirely mutually exclusive — different channels, different stars, different bloggers, different news…And within those two spheres are smaller, more niche spheres geared toward specific viewpoints.

In other words, nuance is the big selling point. That, and nichedom. Mainstream press is not going to be able to compete with that, simply because it’s both too generic and now too corrupt for people to fully trust.

Mainstream is now niche, often local, and heavily politicized based on the readers’ definition of the truth. This tends to happen when the common dialogue has already split into factions. And no, it’s not likely to go back.

Regardless of your political affiliation, there are probably people out there struggling with things that you personally want to support. If you’re right wing, it might be farmers. If you’re left wing, it might be migrants or minorities. 

You know who almost no one wants to support? 

Billionaire assholes. 

I haven’t heard of a single real billionaire fanboy in my day-to-day life. Most of the “fans” you see are just bot accounts on X or (quite literally) paid to say nice things about them. 

The mask fell off some time around December or so, at least for most of us. For some folks, paying for things like Amazon will never go out of style. However, most of us have started to think twice. A dollar spent on indie creators is a dollar mainstream media does not get — and people know that.

A major growing trend is all about supporting indie authors, content creators, and businesses. This is particularly true with younger crowds, per the American Press Institute.

Does this mean we’ll see a utopia of ars gratia artis? Not quite. Whether we want to admit it or not, the media industry is still an industry. In other words, profiting will still play a part. 

What we will more likely see is a quiet revolution that has these traits: