SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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.
(Score: 1) by Soylentbob on Thursday March 16 2017, @11:01AM (2 children)
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)
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
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]