As a medium that was seemingly looking at a sharp decline due to the emergence of e-readers and smartphones, sales of printed books have actually been doing quite well over the last three years.
For 2016, the publishing industry overall was up about 3% in units sold over 2015, which is the third straight year of rising sales. Part of this may be due to the fact that there are a growing number of popular adult non-fiction books hitting the market. The target demographic for these books is usually an older audience, one that may not be able to use an e-reader or smartphone to read a book as easily as the younger generation.
Overall, print distribution is up about 10% over 2013 numbers, which is incredible considering that many analysts had predicted a slow and steady decline for book readership the same way newspaper readership has been going down. It seems as though the exact opposite has happened, possibly due to the expanded access that authors now have to the market thanks to the very same platforms that distribute e-books.
Audiobook sales do seem to be in free fall, down about 30% from what there were at in 2013, but that medium has never been overly popular with readers, accounting for less than .5% of the printed book industry.
For published authors, printed book sales used to be the number to go by when determining bestsellers and how widespread the books popularity had become. The fact that e-book sales are only about 17% lower than physical book sales makes it imperative to look into both formats when discussing authors and their works. Smaller authors may have all of their sales via an electronic format due to the easier market access. Overlooking those such authors may mean missing out on some great reads.
More: Average Credit Scores by State – Take a Guess at Where Your State Ranks
klieber on April 15th, 2017 at 15:55 UTC »
I personally believe at least part of this is due to the disparity in pricing models between paper and e-books. Paper books are still priced according to the wholesale model, meaning retailers can sell them for however much they want, including selling them at a loss. However, due to publishers desperately wanting to protect their paper-based book business, e-books are forced to be sold under the agency model, meaning publishers can set the prices and retailers have to sell them for that price.
In practice, this means that many popular books are significantly cheaper in paperback form vs. e-book form. For folks purchasing primarily on price, they're going to pick the cheaper, paperback option. This drives up paper-based book sales, but does not necessarily indicate a consumer preference for paper-based books.
I also think this drives up the amount of e-book piracy, which under-represents their popularity when looking strictly at book sales.
snogglethorpe on April 15th, 2017 at 15:39 UTC »
I live in Tokyo, and so spend a lot of time riding crowded trains. One thing I find interesting is noticing the changes in how people occupy themselves while on the train.
When I first came to Japan, about 20 years ago, it was basically newspapers and books, with a few people using gameboys and the like (plus the usual sleeping and staring into space, but these aren't interesting). Many people in Japan had mobile phones back then, but they weren't really sophisticated enough to be a particularly good entertainment source.
Gradually over the years, as phones got more and more capable, peoples' attention started shifting more and more to their phones, as the technology improved and they became more and more fashionable. Smartphones accelerated this trend even more (Japan has always had much better non-smartphones than most countries, so smartphones weren't as big a change here, but they still had a huge influence).
The funny thing, however, is that for a while (4-5 years?), things seem to be moving in the opposite direction: Many people still stare at their phone, etc, but the number of people reading novels and the like has palpably increased, and often there seem to be more people reading real books than playing with their phone. Even newspapers seem to be making a comeback.
The impression I get is sort of that the bloom is off the rose: that the fashion component that is part of what drives such usage has dwindled. Phones are still useful tools, but they aren't really so cool any longer, and people are remembering the various advantages physical media have over the electronic.
[...These are just my personal observations, of course, are based on a limited geographical area, and are probably crazily inaccurate; take with an appropriately giant grain of salt...]
plaidtattoos on April 15th, 2017 at 15:29 UTC »
When my Amazon account was hacked, I figured the best thing to do would be to shut it down and just open a new one. So I called Amazon to find out how to transfer hundreds of dollars worth of Kindle purchases over to my new account. Nope - can't do that. So "buying" a Kindle book isn't really buying one. They should really sort that out.