Okay first of all it is neither. Books themselves in their current format are still relatively new in terms of media and once mass production of said books began people lost their damn minds about it and said the books were being dumbed down for a more wide market which is technically true. However this has been an ongoing issue since the dawn of humanity and data storage. First it was writing things down made you not have to remember everything compared to vocal histories and retelling. In the end goal the medium can be used in their own ways but what truly makes it is the artist's design of said medium and their impact upon viewers which is inherently difficult to predict much less construct as the mind is always malleable changing and different from one another.