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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 stormwyrm on Wednesday May 03 2017, @01:43AM (2 children)
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday May 03 2017, @04:31AM
Agreed. Full-text search can be useful. On the other hand, physical books have consistent layout, which means I can often find a familiar passage because I remember "it's about 3/4 through, and there's a diagram of a cactus in the upper right corner, and a heading with the passage on the opposite page."
That visual/tactile memory is often still useful to me for reference books I use regularly (and sometimes easier to locate if I can't remember the right words to look for, or I'm trying to find a diagram or figure or whatever). For occasional use, full-text search is probably better.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday May 03 2017, @03:23PM
You sound like my 89 year old mother when she first got a tablet. She's back to real books, mostly because it's too easy to spend a lot of money on e-books without realizing it.
Most books I read I simply check out from the public library. Often after I've read a particularly good one (like The Martian) I'll buy the hardcover. Hell, you can even check out e-books now, you don't even have to physically go to the library for many titles.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org