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You are here: Home / Archives for ebooks

Children prefer to read books on paper rather than screens

March 10, 2017 By achuka Leave a Comment

This is interesting, and worth following the link to the cited research paper…

There is a common perception that children are more likely to read if it is on a device such as an iPad or Kindles. But new research shows that this is not necessarily the case.

In a study of children in Year 4 and 6, those who had regular access to devices with eReading capability (such as Kindles, iPads and mobile phones) did not tend to use their devices for reading – and this was the case even when they were daily book readers.

Research also found that the more devices a child had access to, the less they read in general.

It suggests that providing children with eReading devices can actually inhibit their reading, and that paper books are often still preferred by young people.

These findings match previous research which looked at how teenagers prefer to read. This research found that while some students enjoyed reading books on devices, the majority of students with access to these technologies did not use them regularly for this purpose. Importantly, the most avid book readers did not frequently read books on screens.

http://theconversation.com/children-prefer-to-read-books-on-paper-rather-than-screens-74171

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: digital, ebooks

Major Publishers ebook Revenue Continues to Plummet

February 13, 2016 By achuka Leave a Comment

goodereaderOver the course of the last twelve months major publishers have all reported that e-book revenue has begun to plummet.  This downward trend has continued into 2016, as HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette have all reported diminished revenue.

Simon & Schuster has just released their quarterly financial results and e-book sales accounted for just 21% of total publishing revenues in the fourth quarter, down from the 24% they accounted for in the same quarter a year earlier.

via Major Publishers ebook Revenue Continues to Plummet.

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: digital, ebooks

Surge In Digital Audiobook Sales Alongside Huge Slump In eBooks For Children/YA

January 28, 2016 By achuka Leave a Comment

The Association of American Publishers have just released their new SnapShot report and they found that digital audiobook sales increased 37.7% from January to September 2015.

The global audiobook industry is currently evaluated at 2.8 billion dollars, and the United States only accounts for $200 million of this total.  One of the big reasons why growth has been so explosive the last few years is primarily due to the sheer amount of new titles are being produced. 43,000 new audiobooks were released by major publishers and distributed through companies like Audible, iBooks, Findaway and your local library in 2015.

The APP has also found that eBooks sales fell 11.1%, with most of the decline coming from Children/YA books (44.8%). Meanwhile print is enjoying a resurgence with paperback books enjoying 13.3% growth.

via Digital Audiobook Sales Increase 37.7% in 2015.

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: audiobooks, ebooks

YA e-Book Sales Decline 44.5% in 2015 (e-Books generally down 11.5%)

December 19, 2015 By achuka Leave a Comment

goodereader

The Association of American Publishers has just released their annual report that takes a look at the overall health of the industry and how well audiobooks, e-books, hardcover and paper sales are doing. The organization has reported that e-book sales have declined 11% on the year with YA falling a staggering 44.5% from the same period in 2014.

via e-Book Sales Decline 11.0% in 2015.

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: data, digital, ebooks, Kindle, sales

Penguin blames likely job losses on rise of ebooks

December 9, 2015 By achuka Leave a Comment

After all the recent upbeat news about the resurgence of interest in the physical book and the apparent drop in popularity of ebooks (largely it has to be said stemming from James Daunt’s upbeat view of business at Waterstones) this piece, tucked away in The Guardian’s Financial section, came as a bit of a cautionary surprise…

guardiansmall

Print sales have been in decline as ereaders such as Amazon’s Kindle and rivals Kobo and Nook prove more popular. Figures from the Publishers Association show that UK digital book sales rose 11% to £563m last year, while print copies fell 5% to £2.75bn.

Ebooks now make up 25% of the market, just eight years after the launch of the Kindle in 2007. Figures released this year by NielsenBookScan showed physical sales of adult fiction had declined by more than £150m in just five years.

via Penguin blames likely job losses on rise of ebooks | Books | The Guardian.

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: ebooks, jobs, sales

Children’s books triumph over threatened e-book takeover | The Australian

November 21, 2015 By achuka Leave a Comment

from The Australian

“I think the (global) industry has seen off the threat, to be honest­,’’ Ms Drake said. “The growth in e-books is stagnating across the world, particularly in America. A couple of years ago, it was the great threat; it hasn’t really­ worked out that way.’’

Ms Drake admitted that “we all suffered to a certain degree when Borders and A&R went under’’, as those collapses entrenched­ the notion that bookstores were doomed.

However, alongside retailers such as Dymocks, Big W — which claims to be the nation’s biggest bookseller — realised kids’ books were key to holding back the digital tide. This is because­ most parents want to limit the time kids spend in front of screens.

“Parents don’t encourage their kids to read (e-books),’’ said Ms Drake, adding: “We deliberately engin­eered our range to be more appropriate for children, because we saw that that’s where the growth was going to be.’’

When the influential yet little-known bookseller started at Big W in 2008, children’s titles accounte­d for about 35 per cent of the discount department store’s book sales; now that is closer to half. Dymocks, meanwhile, has seen a 30 per cent rise in children’s book sales since 2010.

Social media-obsessed teens have also spurned the e-book revolution. Ms Drake said: “Where you’d think teens would be a signif­icant e-reading population, it never went that way. And certainly, with a phenomenon like Twilight or John Green, it was importa­nt (for teenagers) to have the artefact (the print book), and to be seen with the artefact.’’

via Children’s books triumph over threatened e-book takeover | The Australian.

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: digital, ebooks, print

Are e-Books Doomed?

September 27, 2015 By achuka Leave a Comment

Michael Kozlowski, who has been writing about e-books for quite some time, now considers the format doomed:

goodereader

Major publishers have gained the ability to dictate their own prices on e-books and this has dramatically increased the cost to the customer. In many cases the hardcover is actually cheaper than the digital version and this is primarily due to predatory pricing.

Publishers have been making moves to capitalize on the convenience and instant delivery of e-Books by making them more expensive than their printed counterparts. I have talked to many high ranking executives off the record and they have told me that they foresee the destruction of the e-book market and are anticipating higher profits on print down the road.

There are many companies that are heavily involved in the e-book sector that have went out of business over the course of the last year. Sony killed off their consumer e-reader division and abandoned the Reader Store in every country, but Japan. Diesel eBooks, Oyster, Entitle, Txtr, Blinkbox Books and others have all closed up shop because e-books are no longer profitable.

further extracts:

The Kindle “has disappeared to all intents and purposes”, said James Daunt the head of Britain’s biggest book chain Waterstones. He also reported that print book sales lifted by 5% in December 2014 and that they plan on opening at least a dozen stores in 2015 . Foyles, the London chain of bookstores, said sales of physical books had risen 11% last Christmas. Across the pond, Australian bookseller Jon Page of Page and Pages said “Sales were up 3% last year, and will increase by 6% in 2015, which is fantastic because for the last three years we’d actually seen a decline.”

In a few short years most digital bookstores will be out of business and Amazon and Kobo will likely be the only players left. The only digital bookstores that will survive will be companies offering both hardware/software solutions and everyone else will be gone. The destruction of the digital book market has already been set in motion and there is nothing that can prevent the format from being completely annihilated.

via Publishers Initiate Predatory Pricing on e-Books to Destroy the Market.

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: books, bookshops, digital, ebooks, print

Traditional books on paper open a new chapter of success

April 14, 2015 By achuka Leave a Comment

Another piece celebrating the bouyancy of print and slowdown in ebook expansion:

Observer

Public affection for print runs deeper than some had thought. On the eve of the London Book Fair, a three-day trade extravaganza that starts on Tuesday, optimism is rippling through the industry that it can weather the digital age. The idea that the ebook will kill the paperback seems increasingly like a tall tale.

Total spending on print and electronic books increased by 4% to £2.2bn in 2014, according to market data firm Nielsen. Ebooks now account for around 30% of all books published, including almost 50% of adult fiction. But the decline in print is levelling off as migration to ebooks declines. For some in the industry, it is a sign the dust is beginning to settle after the great digital shake-up.

“Ebooks will continue to grow, but the speed of growth has started to slow and perhaps we are getting close to saturation in some areas,” said Steve Bohme, consumer director at Nielsen.

Millennials, the generation supposed to be glued to their screens, still buy paperbacks. Sales of children’s literature in print rose by 9% in 2014, largely driven by teens, twenty- and thirtysomethings buying fiction marketed as young adult, such as the Hunger Games series or The Fault in Our Stars, John Green’s love story about a teenager with cancer. The mood has also been buoyed by the resurgence of Waterstones, which reported a 5% rise in physical sales in December.

via Traditional books on paper open a new chapter of success | Books | The Guardian.

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: digital, ebooks, eReaders, hardback, paperback, print

Amazon Controls 95% of the eBook Market in the UK

March 27, 2015 By achuka Leave a Comment

goodereaderThe president of the UK Booksellers Association, Tim Walker spoke at the Nielsen BookInsights conference yesterday and made some startling revelations.

During a round-table discussion Tim said “I do a have a concern that Amazon’s dominance is causing problems. We estimate Kindle has a 95% market share of e-book sales in the UK and this is having a damaging effect… Consider the struggles of Barnes & Noble and the Nook platform, the problems of the established Txtr in Germany, and the decision here of Tesco to pull out of Blinkbox Books.”

via Amazon Controls 95% of the eBook Market in the UK.

Filed Under: Blog, Books, Web/Design Tagged With: Amazon, ebooks, ereader, Kindle, market

Long live the ebook – it’s a champion of the printed word, says Philip Jones

January 8, 2015 By achuka 1 Comment

With the public promiscuously hopping from one format to another, reports of the e-reader’s death look distinctly premature…

The rise of these electronic devices built only for reading has been a boon to the books sector. The transition to digital reading brought with it a new kind of publishing that was distinctly more experimental, energetic and (nakedly) commercial than that which preceded it. Just this week the publisher Little, Brown began publishing ebook shorts based on the hugely successful Broadchurch TV series that are made available to download in the hours after each show.

Outside of traditional publishing, digital reading has allowed authors to publish directly to marketplaces run by Amazon, Nook and Kobo. We have also seen the rise of fan-fiction sites (one of which helped create Fifty Shades) and writer development sites such as Wattpad and Movellas.

There is a vibrancy and quickness around publishing that can be directly linked to the arrival of the ebook. It has helped revive the print book market, with titles such as The Miniaturist and H is for Hawk published as beautifully rendered physical editions to be held, read and kept. The better publishers understand the boundaries of these different channels, the better they have become at delivering content to them.

via Long live the ebook – it’s a champion of the printed word | Philip Jones | Comment is free | The Guardian.

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: ebooks, eReaders, Kindle, print, publishing, trends

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