photo InternetUA
At the beginning of this decade, the popularity of e-books like the Amazon Kindle allowed some journalists to say that the print media had died. However, in the last few years there has been a significant decline in sales of electronic books, while paper books and magazines are on the rise.
According to the Association of American Publishers, for the first nine months of 2016, e-book sales in the US declined by 18.7%. At the same time, sales of real hardback and hardback books grew by 7.5% and 4.1% respectively.
The same trend is observed in the UK, where the decline in sales of electronic books was 17%, while physical books showed sales growth of 7%. Particularly well manifested themselves children's books, whose sales grew 16%.
It is possible that users have accumulated so many different devices with eye-damaging and posturing screens that they try, as far as possible, to reduce interaction with them. If computers and smartphones are difficult to manage, then e-books have a century-proven alternative in the form of real books.
Sales of e-books reached their highest level in 2011, after which this figure fell by 50%. Naturally, together with the sales of the devices themselves, sales of content for them decrease.
A study by the Pew Research Center showed that last year 65% of Americans read real books, while electronic books read 28%. A quarter of the population does not read any books, including audiobooks.