E-books Became Less Popular

It seems that the predicted death of printed books has been much exaggerated. It’s been a few years now that the tech companies have been claiming the traditional books were dead and everyone in the world will be reading from digital devices including tablets and e-books in the future.

These predictions were confirmed by shedloads of statistics which revealed that e-books were rushing past printed book sales. However, the Wall Street Journal has recently published a new study on the reading habits of the Americans. The report on the study was titled “E-book Reading Jumps; Print Book Reading Declines”. Although the report hinted at doom of Gutenberg’s dream, there still were statistics suggesting that something else is happening.

For instance, traditional books remain the preferred format for US book readers, with 89% of them confirming that they read at least one printed book per year. Although this may sound shocking for some, it appears that the Americans simply have difficulty reading in common, because only 30% said they read at least one e-book.

Within the past year, the percentage of the adults reading e-books has increased, while the percentage of people who read printed books fell, but the changes were insignificant: the number of e-book readers rose from 16% to 23%, while traditional book readers declined from 72% to 67%. Although the change is happening, it tends to slow down.

According to other sales data, print sales are holding their own against e-books and the industry observers insist that digital sales are slowing down. The Association of US Publishers also confirmed that annual growth in adult e-book sales fell to 34% within the first half of 2012. In addition, e-reader sales are also decreasing, partly because e-readers are switching to tablets. The statistics say that e-reader sales dropped 36% last year. At the same time, tablet sales have rocketed. However, the reading of e-books on tablets is not very popular, because users are mostly distracted with games, videos and social networks, and many people point out that it’s harder to read a book on a tablet.

In other words, the current situation is the following: the mass-market print is taking a kicking from e-books, but the traditional books with valuable information are holding their own. 99% of the readers agree they prefer e-book only to read pulp fiction or any other books while traveling, since they don’t want to carry a book around.