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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 julian on Tuesday May 02 2017, @11:22PM (4 children)
You can't beat paper books for longevity. The oldest book in my library is from the late 19th Century. Good luck reading epub or mobi files in the 22nd Century, even without DRM.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday May 03 2017, @12:14AM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @01:45AM
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday May 03 2017, @04:57AM (1 child)
Sure you can beat paper books, but parchment/vellum is hard to come by these days. 500-year-old paper can be pretty fragile (and cheap paper held in poor conditions can degrade significantly in 50 years or less), but a lot of the 1000-year-old parchment I've handled has been in great condition, aside from wormholes and such. Linen or cotton paper can generally hold up much better than wood pulp, so be careful of books made in the past couple centuries with wood pulp paper (a lot of it has acid which will significantly increase degradation rate). Paper books older than ~150 years are less likely to be wood and are actually more durable in general.
A medievalist professor was fond of reminding us how many sheep had to die to make the manuscript we were looking at. Those books are hardy, though.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday May 03 2017, @03:36PM
cheap paper held in poor conditions can degrade significantly in 50 years or less
That's a myth. I have paperbacks I bough in the 1960s that are just fine, except some of them have loose covers. All still readable.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org