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posted by on Thursday March 16 2017, @08:05AM   Printer-friendly
from the there's-nothing-like-the-smell-of-pixels-on-silicon dept.

Submitted via IRC

Nielsen survey finds UK ebook sales declined by 4% in 2016, the second consecutive year digital has shrunk

[...] The shift was attributed to the explosion in adult colouring books, as well as a year of high-profile fiction releases, including The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins and Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee. "Readers take a pleasure in a physical book that does not translate well on to digital," the Publishers Association report read.

But Nielsen's survey of 2016 attributed the increase in print sales to children's fiction and to younger generations preferring physical books to e-readers. A 2013 survey by the youth research agency Voxburner found that 62% of 16- to 24-year-olds preferred print books to ebooks. The most popular reason given was: "I like to hold the product." While Nielsen found that 50% of all fiction sales were in ebook format, only 4% of children's fiction was digital.

Steve Bohme, research director at Nielsen Book Research UK, who presented the data on Monday ahead of this year's London book fair, said young people were using books as a break from their devices or social media. "We are seeing that books are a respite, particularly for young people who are so busy digitally," he said.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/14/ebook-sales-continue-to-fall-nielsen-survey-uk-book-sales


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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Soylentbob on Thursday March 16 2017, @08:53AM (12 children)

    by Soylentbob (6519) on Thursday March 16 2017, @08:53AM (#479706)

    I thought the same way earlier. I think, each generation has their retro-phase. When most of my reading-time was spent at home, in my room, there was no reason to go for e-books (except, maybe, project-gutenberg). Being on the train 2h a day, and liking to travel on vacations, e-books do have some substantial advantages.

    There are some disadvantages, though. Different DRM implementations, no generic hardware, hassle to get the books onto the device (The books have a lot of spy-crap installed, and since I don't want it to be public how much, when and what I read, using the WLan on the device is an absolute no-go. Purchasing otherwise and copying via USB is possible, but annoying.)

    And of course, e-books are only good for text-based, sequential content. So, neither for technical books (where I tend to go for- and back a lot) nor for books with lots of illustrations.

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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Thursday March 16 2017, @09:04AM (10 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday March 16 2017, @09:04AM (#479712) Journal

    E-readers do support PDFs. Just shittily.

    Tablets and laptop screens can handle illustrated PDFs just fine. A few technological advancements related to either fast-updating color e-ink or lower power consumption quantum/OLED/whatever displays could result in a bit of convergent evolution, merging the e-reader with the tablet.

    DRM and annoyances are avoidable if you pirate the ebooks and use some application like calibre to view them all. Then the problem becomes finding a convenient location with a good selection of pirated ebooks. That's a solved problem for TV, movies, and scientific papers, but ebooks are a tougher nut to crack.

    --
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    • (Score: 1) by Soylentbob on Thursday March 16 2017, @09:24AM (3 children)

      by Soylentbob (6519) on Thursday March 16 2017, @09:24AM (#479718)

      Call me weirdo (or preferably, don't), but actually I'm fine with paying for my books. There are few readers I really like (e.g. Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams, Isaak Asimov, Neil Gaiman; previously: Stephen King, J.K. Rowling), and I want them to be able to life from their book-selling because I want them to stay motivated to write more good books (those still alive from that list). I checked a couple of less famous authors, and every once in a while do again, but somehow I never found any gem where the story flows as well as with the real famous ones.
      I just agree with the dead-tree fans, that after buying it, I should own it, and an ebook-reader worth its name should be able to properly support any ebook-format worth its name.

      What really bugs me is that, just like with movies, the paying customer is always at a disadvantage (beyond losing the money). I could buy the paperback edition and afterwards download pirated version with halfway good conscience, but would feel stupid for contributing to the pollution (ink, water usage, transport, wood) to put a product in my house which I don't actually want. I can buy the e-book version, but have to deal with conversion tools, half-legal drm-hacking tools, often requiring Windows VM (On Linux, I can not convert an Amazon ebook to unencrypted epub.), and whatnot.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @10:37AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @10:37AM (#479724)

        Call me weirdo (or preferably, don't), but actually I'm fine with paying for my books.

        Most people are. It's not the paying that's the problem. It's being treated like a thief afterwards.

        ------
        (Plug: I don't have an e-reader, but if you like SF and fantasy, I've heard very good things about e-books from Baen Books [baen.com]:

        Digital rights management restricts the number of formats in which you can enjoy electronic media you have purchased. At Baen, we believe that when you purchase an Ebook, you should be able to access that book however you choose. For that reason, we sell only DRM-free Ebooks -- when you purchase one you have access to any and all formats we offer.

        I do have about a dozen of their dead-tree format books.)

        • (Score: 1) by Soylentbob on Thursday March 16 2017, @10:52AM

          by Soylentbob (6519) on Thursday March 16 2017, @10:52AM (#479725)

          Yes, I read about them as well, but didn't find any of my favourite authors there.

      • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday March 16 2017, @01:09PM

        by bzipitidoo (4388) on Thursday March 16 2017, @01:09PM (#479751) Journal

        > I'm fine with paying

        Pretty much everyone is fine with authors making a living. It is the means that we do not like. You don't like it either. (I note that half the authors on your list are dead, Asimov for 25 years now, surely it should be okay to release their works to the public domain? And 2 of the living ones are the most famous and wealthiest authors in the world, they don't need any financial help.)

        > feel stupid for contributing to the pollution (ink, water usage, transport, wood) to put a product in my house which I don't actually want.... have to deal with conversion tools, half-legal drm-hacking tools

        We should all be feeling stupid for not empowering or even allowing ourselves and our public libraries to fully use digital technology. It's insane that libraries are forced to waste lots of taxpayer money maintaining print collections, with all the limitations. The little they are allowed to do digitally is artificially crippled with restrictions which serve no purpose other than to attempt to force digital media to conform to the limitations of print, for the sake of an obsolete business model. DRM on ebooks and e-readers is indeed quite stupid. We should lean harder on publishers to get with the times and modernize their business model. It really is only the will of the people that lets these publishers continue to abuse us, as if we're parents who will not discipline our ill-mannered children, falling for their childish complaints that they're at a disadvantage and therefore they should be allowed to cheat in games, beat up others, steal from them, and keep the loot when found out, to compensate for how unfair life is being to them.

    • (Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday March 16 2017, @09:29AM (3 children)

      by anubi (2828) on Thursday March 16 2017, @09:29AM (#479720) Journal

      DRM was the thing that kept me from getting into E-books years ago.

      Quite a few years ago, when I was trying to figure out which laptop to purchase, I was in a Barnes and Noble bookstore and they had a table full of what looked like really nifty little electronic readers. I played with one for a while, discovering more of what it would NOT do more than what it would do. It was kind of disgusting that someone would actually make something so neat yet cripple it so that it became an enforcer of someone's business model.

      As pretty as its display was, I had to leave it be. At the time, I was trying to see how it would browse the internet, and someone had it locked down pretty good. So it was about as useful to me as a #2 phillips head screwdriver... good for one thing and one thing only... driving phillips #2 screws. And I certainly was not going to pay $100 for one. As crippled as it was, I expected them to simply give the thing to me to get me to pay for what I thought was way overpriced content.

      --
      "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
      • (Score: 1) by Soylentbob on Thursday March 16 2017, @11:01AM (2 children)

        by Soylentbob (6519) on Thursday March 16 2017, @11:01AM (#479727)

        Not sure what kind of device you were looking at. If it was e-ink, yes, it would probably be terrible at browsing the web, and also for lots of other things. E-ink is great for reading, but not much else. One problem with e-ink is that, while it requires 0 energy to keep a static display, it does require relatively much power to change display. You can go weeks without charging, reading on a daily base, but if you start to excessively turn for and back (or display dynamic content, like a clock), you can empty it quite quickly.

        If it had a colour-display, a normal tablet would probably be way more flexible and preferable.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @12:09PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @12:09PM (#479732)

          I own both a B&N Nook HD+ and an Amazon Kindle HD8.9. Both arrived with that crippleware B&N and Amazon thought would sell more books.
          Both now have Cyanogenmod installed making them great general purpose tablets. I agree that the crippleware that both came with was crap, but the HW was great.

          While I do read books for fun on them using a free reader from the PlayStore, I agree that tech books where you need to flip back and forth are much better on paper.

          • (Score: 1) by anubi on Friday March 17 2017, @03:06AM

            by anubi (2828) on Friday March 17 2017, @03:06AM (#480176) Journal

            I am quite a bit ignorant on how to do this, even to not knowing it could be done.

            Not knowing the potential of the devices, I just saw what was shown to me, and put it back down, sorely underwhelmed.

            This is the kind of thing you sell to investors. Not to customers.

            Investors will buy damned near anything, useful or not. Especially if they are playing around with other people's money.

            --
            "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @12:43PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @12:43PM (#479739)

      DRM and annoyances are avoidable if you pirate the ebooks

      Yes, but if the younger generation were to do that, the publishers would see falling ebook sales.

      Hmmm...

      • (Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday March 16 2017, @12:51PM

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday March 16 2017, @12:51PM (#479743) Journal

        If we believe the article, the trend is benefiting dead tree, not increasing piracy. To my knowledge, there is no "Kodi for ebooks"... yet. Ebook piracy is a niche activity, possibly with the exception of college students looking to save on overpriced textbooks.

        If young people were using pirated ebooks en masse, they would at least spend some money on e-readers or tablets (although Amazon probably envisions making its money on the digital ebooks, not the e-reader device). Last time I checked, the tablet market was not doing well due to market saturation and phablets.

        --
        [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
  • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday March 16 2017, @04:57PM

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Thursday March 16 2017, @04:57PM (#479889)

    There are some disadvantages, though. Different DRM implementations, no generic hardware, hassle to get the books onto the device (The books have a lot of spy-crap installed, and since I don't want it to be public how much, when and what I read, using the WLan on the device is an absolute no-go. Purchasing otherwise and copying via USB is possible, but annoying.)

    And of course, e-books are only good for text-based, sequential content. So, neither for technical books (where I tend to go for- and back a lot) nor for books with lots of illustrations.

    These are all reasons why e-books simply suck. They're a great idea in theory, but in practice they're crap because of all this stuff. It'd be great to have nice, color e-ink display readers that you can store all your books on in an open, non-proprietary format, including technical books, magazines with lots of illustrations, graphic novels, etc., and be able to copy your books as simple files between your devices, to your PC, back them up easily, etc., and not have any spyware or crapware or any kind of bloatware at all on the reader. But of course greed has ruined it all.