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posted by CoolHand on Tuesday May 02 2017, @10:42PM   Printer-friendly
from the some-things-are-just-fine-the-way-they-are dept.

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


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by jmorris on Tuesday May 02 2017, @11:19PM (5 children)

    by jmorris (4844) on Tuesday May 02 2017, @11:19PM (#503282)

    I can see many reasons to abandon ebooks for paper.

    1. The hardware. Break it down to epaper and tablet/pc for reader. Both have problems.

    Epaper is essentially Kindle now, unless you know about and seek out obscure products. No epaper device really delivered on the promise. Reading a novel start to end basically works on one but any other sort of book fails on current epaper due to lack of resolution, screen real estate or color. Try a work with a large table on one, the fun is guessing how it will fail.

    Reading on a tablet is a vastly inferior experience vs paper, all the bad parts of a PC and many of the cramped low resolution problems of epaper, although you do get color and fast enough screen refreshes to pan around on a table... if the software (on the publication or display end) isn't broken... see epaper above. Forget reading them outside, at night in bed, etc. and be sure to stay near an outlet.

    2. The DRM. The different silos of reader/app and content, the hassles of changing brand of device, and the general sense of being caught in a time warp from the 1990s and the situation with music before DRM was eliminated. And like music, the 'product' the pirates offer is easier to obtain and often better. Not a good place for 'legitimate' ebook sellers to be in.

    3. Amazon. They are the 900lb gorilla in the room. They have pretty much driven everyone else out of business with their 'sell everything at a loss and make it up on volume and stock appreciation' business model but when they make everyone a 'take it or leave it' offer they have to expect some people to tell em to keep their Kindle. I will occasionally buy physical goods from them but have never and will never make the mistake of buying into their walled garden. I'm not alone in that attitude but probably not enough to keep B&N or BAM alive much longer.... alas. Hopefully paper books still remain a thing.

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  • (Score: 2) by physicsmajor on Wednesday May 03 2017, @01:00AM (3 children)

    by physicsmajor (1471) on Wednesday May 03 2017, @01:00AM (#503366)

    I agree with most of your points, save the alternate Ebook reader hardware. There are two options which are fantastic in their respective categories.

    The all-around amazing ergonomics, cheap-enough-not-to-use-a-case option: Nook Simple Touch. Not the glowlight, the original. This thing is overbuilt and looks a little weird, until you hold it and realize the ergonomics are way better than the other thin slabs out there. It's so durable you can - and should - give it to your kids. It will take their abuse. The resolution is high enough. I have read millions of pages on one of these. Don't underestimate them, just pick one up off Craigslist for almost nothing and get to reading. Handles all ePubs.

    If you want a more "premium" experience, look at the Kobo Aura H2O or Kobo Aura One. These are at or beyond Kindle quality, except are built to accept any format you care to throw at them. Premium, high resolution screens. In my opinion, they look sharper but are actually not as good as the venerable Nook Simple Touch for ergonomics longer term. However, they can handle PDFs and are certainly slicker. Not sure I'd get my kids one of these, though.

    There are other decent options as well, the point is "Kindle or nothing" is a myopic view of the market. I'd argue both of the above more than deliver on the promise for recreational reading. However, I'd agree that for PDF viewing/journals, etc., ereaders still don't cut it.

    • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday May 03 2017, @01:51AM (1 child)

      by jmorris (4844) on Wednesday May 03 2017, @01:51AM (#503400)

      I own a Nook Simple Touch, from before the Glowlight. Will probably have to replace the battery in another year or two. Discontinued and no longer available in most places, either version. Which is why I said what I did, you have to know alternatives exist and seek them out, usually online, because nobody is marketing anything except Kindle any longer. Kindle won't read epub, lacks a memory slot or any simple (not involving Amazon's services) way of loading content.

      Oh, and the Nook blows for anything but paragraph level formatting. Forget tables and it sometimes screws up simple blockquotes. As I said, for reading a typical novel from begin to end it is good. Forget about any other use of it because you are rolling the dice on making it all the way through, especially if you lack an alternate reader for the book in case you hit a problem. I don't have Windows and won't install the Nook app on my phone (it was horrible at keeping the phone out of deep sleep) so it means avoid B&N's DRM on anything that might possibly be a problem.

      • (Score: 2) by AndyTheAbsurd on Wednesday May 03 2017, @03:21PM

        by AndyTheAbsurd (3958) on Wednesday May 03 2017, @03:21PM (#503678) Journal

        Do the current-revision Kindles not show up as a USB mass storage device when plugged in to a PC, and allow you to place PDF or .mobi files on them? I know that the ones I've handled did - but that's limited to a 3rd-gen Keyboard and a not-sure-what-but-definitely-prior-to-current Glow.

        --
        Please note my username before responding. You may have been trolled.
    • (Score: 2) by richtopia on Wednesday May 03 2017, @01:23PM

      by richtopia (3160) on Wednesday May 03 2017, @01:23PM (#503609) Homepage Journal

      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.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @05:04PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @05:04PM (#503765)

    "Epaper is essentially Kindle now, unless you know about and seek out obscure products."

    Nook is not obscure, thank you very much.
    And Sony built the best quality ereaders. Such that I *still* use my Sony Reader today and will replace its' battery.