Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
New data suggest that the reading public is ditching e-books and returning to the old fashioned printed word.
Sales of consumer e-books plunged 17% in the U.K. in 2016, according to the Publishers Association. Sales of physical books and journals went up by 7% over the same period, while children's books surged 16%.
The same trend is on display in the U.S., where e-book sales declined 18.7% over the first nine months of 2016, according to the Association of American Publishers. Paperback sales were up 7.5% over the same period, and hardback sales increased 4.1%.
"The print format is appealing to many and publishers are finding that some genres lend themselves more to print than others and are using them to drive sales of print books," said Phil Stokes, head of PwC's entertainment and media division in the U.K.
Stokes said that children's book have always been more popular in print, for example, and that many people prefer recipe books in hardback format.
Source: http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/27/media/ebooks-sales-real-books/index.html
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Wednesday May 03 2017, @01:23PM
I switched from the Nook Glo to the Kobo Aura when the Nook finally bit the dust after about five years. Both gave good reading experiences however the OS is different: I rooted the Android Nook but it was stuck on 2.1, so most apps didn't work. Even rooted the battery life was terrible, with the device always being drained after a month of sitting in standby. The Kobo runs Linux but you cannot tell. The battery management is vastly superior, I now have to charge a couple times a year and don't worry to check the battery level when packing for a trip, even when using the backlight.
I haven't used a Kindle so I cannot compare it, but I am biased against Amazon so I probably won't. Anyway, I'm quite sold on the Kobo devices now.