Does the digitalization of the book industry reduce its environmental impact?

Digitalization has transformed the book market with significant environmental consequences. Various life cycle assessments (LCAs) compare the per-unit greenhouse gas (GHG) impacts of reading paper books and e-books. However, they do not capture the net GHG effects of digitalization, which also depend on changes in production and consumption volumes in both formats. This article assesses whether digitalization has increased or decreased the GHG footprint of the book market by combining evidence from LCAs with economic insights on how digitalization affects book supply and demand. Our results show that e-books can lower emissions for heavy readers, while paper books may be more climate-friendly when they are widely shared. While e-books offer advantages such as accessibility and portability that support substitution, many digitalization-driven supply and demand effects expand the overall book market by improving discoverability, lowering costs and prices, and accelerating publication and distribution. Our quantitative analysis indicates that e-books reduce emissions only if they substantially displace print, yet evidence suggests substitution rates are low and emissions may therefore increase. This shows that treating e-books as simple substitutes for paper books is overly simplistic, and that integrated environmental and economic perspectives are needed to assess their net sustainability impact.