SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Hartree on Wednesday May 03 2017, @01:11AM (5 children)
"Real Books Are Back"
Most bookaholics will never let you pry their dead tree versions from their hands. It's a technology that has been optimized over centuries for rapid access, eye comfort, and many other things. Just like a hammer, it's a hard thing to improve on.
The reduced space required for ebooks (you can carry a library) is a boon, but it's not such an advantage for some thing. In some cases, it's nice to be able to flit back and forth between different texts, but for immersing yourself in a good novel it usually isn't a big help.
Perhaps when Elon Musk gets his "neural lace" (All hail Ian Banks!) going we can equal or better it, but not yet with the current ebooks and reader.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by tftp on Wednesday May 03 2017, @03:12AM (3 children)
Most bookaholics will never let you pry their dead tree versions from their hands. It's a technology that has been optimized over centuries for rapid access, eye comfort, and many other things. Just like a hammer, it's a hard thing to improve on.
Eye comfort is a variable thing as you age. I do not read paper books and don't have them anymore. I read only DRM-free e-texts, of which there is more than I am able to consume in the rest of my life. Android + FBreader is my preferred setup, but there are many other options. Digital bits have zero weight, zero size, zero cost, and they are easy to make a backup of. Paper books are the opposite. I had a few, under 50, in a box, but when I looked they all were bad - the paper is crumbling, the binding is falling apart, the pages are all wavy from humidity... do I really want to even touch them? Sure, they should not have been stored in a garage, but then how much time and money should I invest into their storage? E-books have no such issues, they are always new. I do not expect to go back to paper.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @05:39AM (2 children)
What device(s) do you prefer to read your e-books with?
I'm currently using a "recycled" notebook, but it's not quite as flexible as a physical book.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @01:18PM
I have a Kindle Paperwhite for novels, and a Samsung Galaxy S2 Tab for comic books and color PDFs.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Thursday May 04 2017, @12:27AM
Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro SM-T320, just because I have one. I'm sure there are many other devices, some worse, some better.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday May 03 2017, @03:57PM
Asimov predicted the end of print way back in the 1950s in his short story The Fun They Had. When e-book readers started coming out I thought he'd been right--until I released Nobots. When I handed it to my daughter (she was about 25 then) she exclaimed "My dad wrote a book! And it's a REAL book!"
I knew then that printed books are here to stay.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org