7 ms·

Print books are on the rise again in the US

49 points by e15ctr0n 11y ago

danmaz74 11y ago
> The same can’t be said of the e-book, which is seeing a decline in popularity. A Pew Research Center study in October found that fewer Americans are buying and using e-reading devices like Kindles and Nooks than they did in past years. Fewer sales of specialized e-book readers can simply mean that more people use tablets and phones to read e-books. Anyway, I'm glad printed books are most likely here to stay. For studying and reference, a physical book is still much better than their digital counterpart - which instead I prefer for novels.
- wuschel 11y ago
  Good point. Ebook readers have not evolved much as they should in usability. Not sure if that is due to their nature as lock-in device, or if there is some other reason. I am still waiting for a open e-ink ebook reader that has a good interface for managing a ebook collection.
- ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
  Though I have a feeling that a lot of the books people purchase and display on their shelves are never opened after they are initially read. I get the desire to actually own a copy of a book, and quite often I'll notice that the Kindle copy on Amazon is close to being the same price as the physical book-why not indulge a bit? If I'm pretty sure I'll never read it again, or if I feel the least bit worried that I won't enjoy the book, going for the cheaper Kindle option is my first choice (and I don't have tons of money to throw around at books).
  - danmaz74 11y ago
    I agree on that, and I actually buy almost only e-books - I only buy the print version when I find a keeper (which is pretty rare).
praetorian84 11y ago
E-book pricing has become a lot less attractive than it once was. Aside from the convenience of an e-book being easier to travel with and not taking up much space, there's little incentive if they are the same price.
- pmx 11y ago
  I've always thought they should be cheaper. Sure we're paying for the convenience but the cost involved in getting an ebook into the reader's hands is SO much lower than getting a physical copy there.
  - e40 11y ago
    I refuse to buy an ebook if the price is more than the cheapest new, paperback price. I'll either buy the paperback or just not buy it. Usually the latter.
  - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
    They should be cheaper. But publishers don't really like ebooks because they don't control the digital supply chain - which is owned by Amazon, and to a lesser extent Apple and a few also-rans do. Paper pub - B&N, small indies, and the like - has a symbiotic and deferential relationship with the publishers. Amazon is a gorilla the size of New Jersey and would happily eat them all for lunch. So publishing execs are notorious for overpricing ebooks. They don't really care if the ebook market shrivels as long as it doesn't die completely or take paper with it. Result: ebooks are vastly overpriced, and fewer people are buying. Meanwhile the self-pub gold rush of a few years ago has ended. There's not nearly as much 99c "product" being shovelled onto Amazon, and the only writers who are making it are career writers who understand PR and reader retention. The no-talent wannabes saw their sales peak then crash, and they've gone elsewhere. That gives trad pub a little more leverage over content than it had when the gold rush was its peak, and for a while it looked as if it was going to roll over trad pub altogether. I think it's a temporary equilibrium. It's only working for trad pub because it has such good historical PR, which means too many naive writers still believe being published is a path to cultural glory. As the current generation of naifs dies out the next generation is going to be more realistic about publishing, and they'll realise trad pub has less to offer. There will still be the occasional million-seller, but the backlist and mid-list writers will all go direct to digital and manage their own paper print runs if they need to - and they'll earn more doing it, even though prices will be lower.
hownottowrite 11y ago
Nook, Kindle, iPad search trends. http://bit.ly/1karmBs http://bit.ly/1karmBs It's not exactly purchase intent (or precise), but it's certainly an interesting curve.
- asfandyaar 11y ago
  The long-term downward trend is typical for almost any new product when you look at only the US market. It corresponds to market saturation, and "everyone in the US" becoming aware of the particular search term.
- kaybe 11y ago
  I wonder about the spikes. The year-end ones are probably for Christmas presents, but what are the summer ones - summer holidays maybe? (people might want to bring something lightweight for reading..)
asfandyaar 11y ago
I personally prefer the simplicity of a paper book. I only use Kindles for stuff like travel guides, where I don't want to lug a heavy Lonely Planet paper book around, or if I need something immediately.
thewhitetulip 11y ago
There is something like an inherent bias when it comes to change, when ebooks were on the rise we just blatantly assume that 50% people dumped real books for e books, but the fact is there is a steady rise of things when something changes, it doesn't happen that in one day everyone dumped everything. then due to such assumptions we see such posts where we have to grapple with the fact that okay print books aren't going anywhere, only because we had a bias when we were judging things the last time we reported anything. yes, one might argue that we see digital books outside in trains, buses and stuff, but that is the whole point of ereaders, mostly everyone uses them while traveling while they prefer hard copies at home
coliveira 11y ago
I have always believed that printed books will never go away, the same way that movie theaters didn't stop existing because we now have DVD players. Printed books and e-books present a different experience with their own advantages and disadvantages. E-books are good for quick access to lots of information and have a novelty factor. But traditional books are still easier to read, can be stored for a long time, and work better as gifts, among other advantages.
- pmx 11y ago
  I think the main, possibly only reason that movie theaters exist is because they get the movie before DVD/Blu Ray/Steams and keep them for a long time. If we could choose to buy them however we wanted to right away I think less people would brave the cinema and risk having the movie ruined by idiots while they get gouged on food.
  - adrianN 11y ago
    I, for one, don't want to spend thousands on a home theater system that can deliver an equivalent experience to a movie theater, so I will always go to the theater for movies that I think are worth the ten bucks. If you go to a smaller theater, the chances that the movie is ruined by idiots is small.
    - christiangenco 11y ago
      Would you spend a few hundred on an oculus rift and a nice pair of headphones? https://share.oculus.com/app/vr-cinema https://share.oculus.com/app/vr-cinema
- Turing_Machine 11y ago
  "But traditional books are still easier to read," Older people (or anyone with failing vision) would disagree with that statement. Strongly.
ChuckMcM 11y ago
Interesting, I'm growing my e-book library but it gets harder to find DRM free books. So I find myself buying a print book, cutting off the spine and scanning it instead. Now with the Surface Pro screen in "clipboard" mode it is pretty much 1:1 from scan to screen (although smaller books get naturally enlarged).
- mhurron 11y ago
  Calibre can remove a lot of DRM from ebooks.
- harshreality 11y ago
  You would save lots of time figuring out the workflow for using DeDRM. It's not difficult at all. You're wasting time and ending up with poor (in visual quality and lack of flowed text) digital copies of your books. The only books that are worth scanning (and possibly proofreading to make them text rather than image-based books) are books that aren't available as ebooks or have some obscure DRM that's not removable by standard software.
intopieces 11y ago
I was an early adopter of ebooks. I still enjoy them from time to time, but the number of typographical or OCR errors in even mainstream, retail books has made me jump ship. It's frustrating when you pay close to the same price as a physical copy only to find that the company didn't even bother to check it over.
erokar 11y ago
Browsing in ebooks is terrible, at least on my Kindle. I consider text books basically unreadable as ebooks (including on iBooks on a Mac). Fiction I always prefer as physical books anyway. Only use Kindle for traveling — the weight and small size is the only advantage.
- farresito 11y ago
  I've always prefered reference books in paper form; however, novels work very well in kindle. Although there is something about paper books that I miss, I still prefer ebooks. I don't really like moving around from side to side trying to hold the book in the right position when switching pages.
tmalsburg2 11y ago
Perhaps people are realizing that "buying" an ebook doesn't mean that you own it. For example, you can't resell it or lend it to your friend. Basically what Stallman says.
- krrrh 11y ago
  This is true in a traditional conception of ownership, but you own an ebook better in other ways. I.e., I've moved a lot in the last few years to the point where I have given away, or just recycled, most of the paper books I've owned. I still have all the ebook a I've ever purchased. I lost my kindle in a train station last month. I could still access the books I was reading on my phone the same day, and when I get a new kindle all the books will be there with little effort (including notes). While Stallman's old essay was amazingly prescient and showed an understanding of how ecosystems around media distribution that few had at the time, the part he didn't understand was how consumers would differently weigh the benefits and definitions of ownership.
  - tmalsburg2 11y ago
    This is an interesting thought. However, the fact that you were able to give up the ownership of your paper books doesn't mean that you owned them any less than your ebooks. The opposite is true because it's an integral part of ownership that you can give it up or lose it. Ebooks may be more convenient in some situation but that doesn't mean that we have to redefine the meaning of ownership. Further, I suspect that even Amazon would agree that you technically do not own the ebooks that you "bought" from them.
- honestcoyote 11y ago
  I've always thought if the DRM can be easily removed, then it's the same as not having DRM at all. Every purchase I've made from Amazon has the DRM stripped and the files placed in a personal backup. On occasion, I'll send an ebook I purchased to a friend if they expressed an interest. It feels like ownership to me. Even though in legal terms I have the right of resale of all my physical books, in practical terms there's almost no reason to bother. Outside of a few collectibles, it's not worth much. Therefore, lack of resale on the ebooks doesn't feel much more punishing than the practical lack of resale of the physical books.
revelation 11y ago
Who knew, if you raise prices of eBooks beyond hardcopy and collude with other book publishers to make them a plain terrible value proposition, print books will sell more. Little more than a stay of execution.
- Turing_Machine 11y ago
  Yes. Couple that with the fact that much of the "data" in this area comes from books with ISBNs (which almost no U.S. indie books have, due to the bizarre pricing scheme that Bowker has foisted on us) and things really don't look very good for the trad publishers.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
jgalt212 11y ago
I buy physical books because I then have full control over it (it's in my hands). With ebooks, Amazon or others have the control (and the data about my reading habits).
upofadown 11y ago
So I try to buy an ebook but chances are it will turn out to be part of some DRM scam. So I am supposed to buy it anyway and then hope to break the DRM. That's if I can get it at all using a particular DRM system. I might have the wrong operating system or something. ...or... I can buy a block of paper at at actual store where I can browse the shelves. Bulky, but for sure I will be able to start reading it on the way home on the bus. ...or... I can get an entire library using bittorrent.
noamsml 11y ago
Anecdote: I switched back from a kindle after 2 years. My kindle broke in the middle of a thrilling novel (The Magicians by Lev Grossman, highly recommended), and I decided to buy it hardback. Soon enough, I decided to not bother getting my kindle fixed -- paper books felt so much more focused, more visceral, and more engrossing. I'm not sure it's inherent. This may be a generational thing -- I grew up on paper books. Still, one data point.
SeanDav 11y ago
I had a brief fling with ebooks, but it was over pretty much as soon as it started. I will still break out my kindle every now and again I am sure, but I am not a fan of ebooks. A few things pushed me away from ebooks: - I feel that in many cases, ebook prices are just ripping me off. - Lack of good support for all formats: why did I have to root my Kindle to have decent PDF capability? I felt that I was being pushed into a corner I did not want to go. - Amazon having the ability to delete books I had already bought. In some cases they executed that ability. I mean, seriously, they have the ability to reach out and delete a book I paid for and may be in the middle of reading...!!! - Propriety formats and DRM. - I just love the sense of occasion that a real book tends to exude. - I love reading in the bath, risky with an electronic device.
- lsc 11y ago
  >- I feel that in many cases, ebook prices are just ripping me off. I think this is really informative for people who price things, not just for the ebook subject. e-book prices are usually lower than print-book prices. But people feel ripped off, because they know it took the publisher zero marginal effort to make their copy. I mean, I've been on the other side of this, too... I was really surprised when my royalty check came, because if someone buys the e-book alone, I get a massively higher royalty than if someone buys the print book. - so if you are the sort who thinks the author should get paid more and the publisher should get paid less, then e-books are for you. but... really, the interesting thing is just how intuitive the 'labor theory of value' is- we expect the price we pay for a thing to have something to do with the effort and capital that went into making it, and we feel ripped off when it doesn't.
- HelloMcFly 11y ago
  I'm pretty much an exclusive e-book reader anymore. They're almost always cheaper unless buying used (not something I tend to do) though the difference is very marginal, my reader is waterproof, it supports the only format I care about (ePub), and I backup all of my books on my computer anyway which removes DRM and renders moot fears of losing my books. Most important to me: I hate carrying books around. Even so, I wish I could pay $3 extra and just get a physical and digital copy. The only two things I really miss from physical books are 1) ease of lending to others and 2) casual perusal of the collection that call to mind the experience of reading it.
technological 11y ago
I would also like to know how much audio book market increased . I love audio book compared to e book . I could easily listen to it while travelling or in the gym.

49 points by e15ctr0n 11y ago

> The same can’t be said of the e-book, which is seeing a decline in popularity. A Pew Research Center study in October found that fewer Americans are buying and using e-reading devices like Kindles and Nooks than they did in past years. Fewer sales of specialized e-book readers can simply mean that more people use tablets and phones to read e-books. Anyway, I'm glad printed books are most likely here to stay. For studying and reference, a physical book is still much better than their digital counterpart - which instead I prefer for novels.

wuschel 11y ago
Good point. Ebook readers have not evolved much as they should in usability. Not sure if that is due to their nature as lock-in device, or if there is some other reason. I am still waiting for a open e-ink ebook reader that has a good interface for managing a ebook collection.
ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
Though I have a feeling that a lot of the books people purchase and display on their shelves are never opened after they are initially read. I get the desire to actually own a copy of a book, and quite often I'll notice that the Kindle copy on Amazon is close to being the same price as the physical book-why not indulge a bit? If I'm pretty sure I'll never read it again, or if I feel the least bit worried that I won't enjoy the book, going for the cheaper Kindle option is my first choice (and I don't have tons of money to throw around at books).
- danmaz74 11y ago
  I agree on that, and I actually buy almost only e-books - I only buy the print version when I find a keeper (which is pretty rare).

praetorian84 11y ago

E-book pricing has become a lot less attractive than it once was. Aside from the convenience of an e-book being easier to travel with and not taking up much space, there's little incentive if they are the same price.

pmx 11y ago
I've always thought they should be cheaper. Sure we're paying for the convenience but the cost involved in getting an ebook into the reader's hands is SO much lower than getting a physical copy there.
- e40 11y ago
  I refuse to buy an ebook if the price is more than the cheapest new, paperback price. I'll either buy the paperback or just not buy it. Usually the latter.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  They should be cheaper. But publishers don't really like ebooks because they don't control the digital supply chain - which is owned by Amazon, and to a lesser extent Apple and a few also-rans do. Paper pub - B&N, small indies, and the like - has a symbiotic and deferential relationship with the publishers. Amazon is a gorilla the size of New Jersey and would happily eat them all for lunch. So publishing execs are notorious for overpricing ebooks. They don't really care if the ebook market shrivels as long as it doesn't die completely or take paper with it. Result: ebooks are vastly overpriced, and fewer people are buying. Meanwhile the self-pub gold rush of a few years ago has ended. There's not nearly as much 99c "product" being shovelled onto Amazon, and the only writers who are making it are career writers who understand PR and reader retention. The no-talent wannabes saw their sales peak then crash, and they've gone elsewhere. That gives trad pub a little more leverage over content than it had when the gold rush was its peak, and for a while it looked as if it was going to roll over trad pub altogether. I think it's a temporary equilibrium. It's only working for trad pub because it has such good historical PR, which means too many naive writers still believe being published is a path to cultural glory. As the current generation of naifs dies out the next generation is going to be more realistic about publishing, and they'll realise trad pub has less to offer. There will still be the occasional million-seller, but the backlist and mid-list writers will all go direct to digital and manage their own paper print runs if they need to - and they'll earn more doing it, even though prices will be lower.

hownottowrite 11y ago

Nook, Kindle, iPad search trends. http://bit.ly/1karmBs http://bit.ly/1karmBs It's not exactly purchase intent (or precise), but it's certainly an interesting curve.

asfandyaar 11y ago
The long-term downward trend is typical for almost any new product when you look at only the US market. It corresponds to market saturation, and "everyone in the US" becoming aware of the particular search term.
kaybe 11y ago
I wonder about the spikes. The year-end ones are probably for Christmas presents, but what are the summer ones - summer holidays maybe? (people might want to bring something lightweight for reading..)

asfandyaar 11y ago

I personally prefer the simplicity of a paper book. I only use Kindles for stuff like travel guides, where I don't want to lug a heavy Lonely Planet paper book around, or if I need something immediately.

thewhitetulip 11y ago

There is something like an inherent bias when it comes to change, when ebooks were on the rise we just blatantly assume that 50% people dumped real books for e books, but the fact is there is a steady rise of things when something changes, it doesn't happen that in one day everyone dumped everything. then due to such assumptions we see such posts where we have to grapple with the fact that okay print books aren't going anywhere, only because we had a bias when we were judging things the last time we reported anything. yes, one might argue that we see digital books outside in trains, buses and stuff, but that is the whole point of ereaders, mostly everyone uses them while traveling while they prefer hard copies at home

coliveira 11y ago

I have always believed that printed books will never go away, the same way that movie theaters didn't stop existing because we now have DVD players. Printed books and e-books present a different experience with their own advantages and disadvantages. E-books are good for quick access to lots of information and have a novelty factor. But traditional books are still easier to read, can be stored for a long time, and work better as gifts, among other advantages.

pmx 11y ago
I think the main, possibly only reason that movie theaters exist is because they get the movie before DVD/Blu Ray/Steams and keep them for a long time. If we could choose to buy them however we wanted to right away I think less people would brave the cinema and risk having the movie ruined by idiots while they get gouged on food.
- adrianN 11y ago
  I, for one, don't want to spend thousands on a home theater system that can deliver an equivalent experience to a movie theater, so I will always go to the theater for movies that I think are worth the ten bucks. If you go to a smaller theater, the chances that the movie is ruined by idiots is small.
  - christiangenco 11y ago
    Would you spend a few hundred on an oculus rift and a nice pair of headphones? https://share.oculus.com/app/vr-cinema https://share.oculus.com/app/vr-cinema
Turing_Machine 11y ago
"But traditional books are still easier to read," Older people (or anyone with failing vision) would disagree with that statement. Strongly.

ChuckMcM 11y ago

Interesting, I'm growing my e-book library but it gets harder to find DRM free books. So I find myself buying a print book, cutting off the spine and scanning it instead. Now with the Surface Pro screen in "clipboard" mode it is pretty much 1:1 from scan to screen (although smaller books get naturally enlarged).

mhurron 11y ago
Calibre can remove a lot of DRM from ebooks.
harshreality 11y ago
You would save lots of time figuring out the workflow for using DeDRM. It's not difficult at all. You're wasting time and ending up with poor (in visual quality and lack of flowed text) digital copies of your books. The only books that are worth scanning (and possibly proofreading to make them text rather than image-based books) are books that aren't available as ebooks or have some obscure DRM that's not removable by standard software.

intopieces 11y ago

I was an early adopter of ebooks. I still enjoy them from time to time, but the number of typographical or OCR errors in even mainstream, retail books has made me jump ship. It's frustrating when you pay close to the same price as a physical copy only to find that the company didn't even bother to check it over.

erokar 11y ago

Browsing in ebooks is terrible, at least on my Kindle. I consider text books basically unreadable as ebooks (including on iBooks on a Mac). Fiction I always prefer as physical books anyway. Only use Kindle for traveling — the weight and small size is the only advantage.

farresito 11y ago
I've always prefered reference books in paper form; however, novels work very well in kindle. Although there is something about paper books that I miss, I still prefer ebooks. I don't really like moving around from side to side trying to hold the book in the right position when switching pages.

tmalsburg2 11y ago

Perhaps people are realizing that "buying" an ebook doesn't mean that you own it. For example, you can't resell it or lend it to your friend. Basically what Stallman says.

krrrh 11y ago
This is true in a traditional conception of ownership, but you own an ebook better in other ways. I.e., I've moved a lot in the last few years to the point where I have given away, or just recycled, most of the paper books I've owned. I still have all the ebook a I've ever purchased. I lost my kindle in a train station last month. I could still access the books I was reading on my phone the same day, and when I get a new kindle all the books will be there with little effort (including notes). While Stallman's old essay was amazingly prescient and showed an understanding of how ecosystems around media distribution that few had at the time, the part he didn't understand was how consumers would differently weigh the benefits and definitions of ownership.
- tmalsburg2 11y ago
  This is an interesting thought. However, the fact that you were able to give up the ownership of your paper books doesn't mean that you owned them any less than your ebooks. The opposite is true because it's an integral part of ownership that you can give it up or lose it. Ebooks may be more convenient in some situation but that doesn't mean that we have to redefine the meaning of ownership. Further, I suspect that even Amazon would agree that you technically do not own the ebooks that you "bought" from them.
honestcoyote 11y ago
I've always thought if the DRM can be easily removed, then it's the same as not having DRM at all. Every purchase I've made from Amazon has the DRM stripped and the files placed in a personal backup. On occasion, I'll send an ebook I purchased to a friend if they expressed an interest. It feels like ownership to me. Even though in legal terms I have the right of resale of all my physical books, in practical terms there's almost no reason to bother. Outside of a few collectibles, it's not worth much. Therefore, lack of resale on the ebooks doesn't feel much more punishing than the practical lack of resale of the physical books.

revelation 11y ago

Who knew, if you raise prices of eBooks beyond hardcopy and collude with other book publishers to make them a plain terrible value proposition, print books will sell more. Little more than a stay of execution.

Turing_Machine 11y ago
Yes. Couple that with the fact that much of the "data" in this area comes from books with ISBNs (which almost no U.S. indie books have, due to the bizarre pricing scheme that Bowker has foisted on us) and things really don't look very good for the trad publishers.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

jgalt212 11y ago

I buy physical books because I then have full control over it (it's in my hands). With ebooks, Amazon or others have the control (and the data about my reading habits).

upofadown 11y ago

So I try to buy an ebook but chances are it will turn out to be part of some DRM scam. So I am supposed to buy it anyway and then hope to break the DRM. That's if I can get it at all using a particular DRM system. I might have the wrong operating system or something. ...or... I can buy a block of paper at at actual store where I can browse the shelves. Bulky, but for sure I will be able to start reading it on the way home on the bus. ...or... I can get an entire library using bittorrent.

noamsml 11y ago

Anecdote: I switched back from a kindle after 2 years. My kindle broke in the middle of a thrilling novel (The Magicians by Lev Grossman, highly recommended), and I decided to buy it hardback. Soon enough, I decided to not bother getting my kindle fixed -- paper books felt so much more focused, more visceral, and more engrossing. I'm not sure it's inherent. This may be a generational thing -- I grew up on paper books. Still, one data point.

SeanDav 11y ago

I had a brief fling with ebooks, but it was over pretty much as soon as it started. I will still break out my kindle every now and again I am sure, but I am not a fan of ebooks. A few things pushed me away from ebooks: - I feel that in many cases, ebook prices are just ripping me off. - Lack of good support for all formats: why did I have to root my Kindle to have decent PDF capability? I felt that I was being pushed into a corner I did not want to go. - Amazon having the ability to delete books I had already bought. In some cases they executed that ability. I mean, seriously, they have the ability to reach out and delete a book I paid for and may be in the middle of reading...!!! - Propriety formats and DRM. - I just love the sense of occasion that a real book tends to exude. - I love reading in the bath, risky with an electronic device.

lsc 11y ago
>- I feel that in many cases, ebook prices are just ripping me off. I think this is really informative for people who price things, not just for the ebook subject. e-book prices are usually lower than print-book prices. But people feel ripped off, because they know it took the publisher zero marginal effort to make their copy. I mean, I've been on the other side of this, too... I was really surprised when my royalty check came, because if someone buys the e-book alone, I get a massively higher royalty than if someone buys the print book. - so if you are the sort who thinks the author should get paid more and the publisher should get paid less, then e-books are for you. but... really, the interesting thing is just how intuitive the 'labor theory of value' is- we expect the price we pay for a thing to have something to do with the effort and capital that went into making it, and we feel ripped off when it doesn't.
HelloMcFly 11y ago
I'm pretty much an exclusive e-book reader anymore. They're almost always cheaper unless buying used (not something I tend to do) though the difference is very marginal, my reader is waterproof, it supports the only format I care about (ePub), and I backup all of my books on my computer anyway which removes DRM and renders moot fears of losing my books. Most important to me: I hate carrying books around. Even so, I wish I could pay $3 extra and just get a physical and digital copy. The only two things I really miss from physical books are 1) ease of lending to others and 2) casual perusal of the collection that call to mind the experience of reading it.

technological 11y ago

I would also like to know how much audio book market increased . I love audio book compared to e book . I could easily listen to it while travelling or in the gym.