Electronic Book Sales Declining
September 11, 2013
Interesting. I didn’t think the move toward digital books was fad, but now Rough Type reports on “The Flattening of E-Book Sales.” Blogger Nicholas Carr noted in January that e-book sales had declined last year, and now shares evidence that the slide continues. He writes:
“The Association of American Publishers reports that in the first quarter of 2013, overall e-book sales in the U.S. trade market grew by just 5 percent over where they were in the same period in 2012. The explosive growth of the last few years has basically petered out, according to the AAP numbers.”
Why? Carr suggests several reasons, including my own suspicion—that enthused early adopters have just about finished transitioning their libraries to the digital format. Other factors could include the realization that e-books work better for some sorts of books than others. Perhaps more importantly, e-books save readers much less cash than expected; most are not much cheaper than a paperback version. He also cites the waning popularity of dedicated e-readers:
“Most intriguing, to me, is the possible link between the decline in dedicated e-readers (as multitasking tablets take over) and the softening of e-book sales. Are tablets less conducive to book buying and reading than e-readers were?”
I personally don’t see why they would be, but then I’ve never worked with an e-reader myself—I didn’t see the point when the much more versatile tablets were hitting the market. Is there something special about the e-reader experience?
See the write-up for more facts and figures on e-book sales. Will the decline continue, or will the market settle into a post-novelty plateau?
Cynthia Murrell, September 11, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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