Thread by @jeffjarvis

Ah, yes, remember when Tristan Harris said no one got upset over the bicycle? Here is Publishers Weekly in 1895 lamenting the state of bookselling and "the wheelman is blamed."

Note well that PW also fretted about magazines and newspapers (the line between them & books was not distinct), discounting department stores, and cheap books for the masses. Edison's audio inventions also worried them. See here podcasters circa 1894 via Scribner's:

In 1910 the Springfield Republican warned that cheap books would bring the culture what magazines had: "the peril of impermanence."

In 1911, English poet Edmund Gosse lamented that Carnegie Libraries made "the superfluity of printed matter an absolute nightmare." He advocated "enormous destruction of printed books" else "librarians will go mad."

Facebook of 1880: fiction. Hour magazine warned: "Novel-readers are like opium-smokers: the more they have it the more they want of it, & the publishers, delighted at this state of affairs go on corrupting public taste & understanding & making fortunes out of this corruption."

FB OB of 1908: Booksellers Assn: "Recognizing the responsibility of the bookseller in disseminating the literature of the community, this Assn feels called upon at this time to use its influence to discourage the publication & sale of books of pronounced immoral character."