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: 2) by VLM on Wednesday May 03 2017, @02:51PM (1 child)
The "having to pay" is stuff like hobby projects.
I've always been petrified of going to a sales meeting with management "So hows that kilowatt level UHF power linear RF amplifier project doing? We've been giving one of your guys all kinds of databooks and piles of free sample hardware and a really nice eval board" and I don't want to explain that's a home ham radio hobby project. I seem to recall one of the big name RF suppliers used to treat people claiming to be working on hobby projects as being some fascinating classified spaceship project so they just wouldn't leave me alone. "Oh I see you bought a C-band directional coupler from us, hows that working out for you, I was just calling to see if you'd like a qty 1000 quote on our new aerospace rated model, its great for military radar work" and after awhile its like oh god I never should have left my phone number on the order form...
I remember I took a logic class (EE not philosophy) so long ago, like 1990, that we had to buy a TI TTL databook as a textbook. They taught us how to figure out timing and fan in/out ratios between logic families and stuff. I seem to recall an open book test, maybe a final, was designing a hardware multiplier with some weird mandatory requirements to trip us up and force us to do weird things, and it was a monster of a task. It can take along time for a wide adder to settle if you don't do the look ahead carry thing, the prof tricked us / forced us into a shift-add topology where the assigned family couldn't handle the fan-out ratio, it was a real headache. I don't remember if it had to be pipelined, probably did.
Nothing takes the fun out of a hobby better than taking a class for credit, other than employment obviously.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Thursday May 04 2017, @02:07AM
Silly you. My personal projects always used chips that I used for work. Why? A) I don't have to waste my free time learning stuff I learn at work; and B) I get, um, "free" samples for the chip at work. Been 30 years since I've done that, but when I was young and struggling I had no problem appropriating chips.
/ I remember back in, oh, 1981 or so
// Company couldn't keep memory chips in stock
/// same chips home computers (TRS-80, etc) used to upgrade from 16k to 64k
//// after 6 months or so the problem magically went away
///// Not saying I know what the problem was, but I had a screamin machine for the time
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.