sales of consumer ebooks down 17%, sales of physical books up 8%

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

And the 3 posts above yours shows that one person's purchases are down, one is stable and the third one does mostly subscriptions or borrows. So we all still read ebooks.

My numbers show a distinct decline. I am excluding from the following numbers books I purchased (ebooks or print) for anyone other than myself, such as for my wife or grandchildren. I don't buy paperbacks, which is why they are not listed.

2010: hardcover - 117; ebooks - 112
2011: hardcover - 56; ebooks - 281
2012: hardcover - 78; ebooks - 275
2013: hardcover - 87; ebooks - 192
2014: hardcover - 128; ebooks - 96
2015: hardcover - 152; ebooks - 22
2016: hardcover - 143; ebooks - 13
2017 to date: hardcover - 33; ebooks - 1

For 2017, I still have 18 hardcovers and 0 (zero) ebooks on preorder.

[tubemonkey]

I'm fully committed to ebooks over hardbacks. The biggest reason why is cost - ebooks are free and hardbacks cost real money.

[John F]

I went to ebooks starting with Sony 505, and haven't looked back.

Sharing is easy. I buy my Mom an eReader (an H2O, she appreciates the larger/adjustable font size), and other people have readers or tablets.

If someone wants to browse my library, I fire up Calibre, and they can simply scroll and click to see covers and descriptions. They can sort multiple ways, they can browse the covers, do searches, ... Who needs books on a shelf?

Library books are much easier, I don't even need to leave my chair.

I can appreciate that some people like pBooks and have their reasons; personally, they don't appeal to me anymore.

[fjtorres]

I've gotten my mother a succession of ereaders going back to the Rocketbook.
Currently she's using a Paperwhite and a Fire 8, both tied to my account. She uses the paperwhite for purchased books and the tablet (that I got her to read online news and do word search puzzles) for the Prime Reading library.
One point she loves about both gadgets that gets glossed over is weight.
eReaders and tablets are lighter than most print books, especially hardcovers.
At her age the large print and weight aspects, well, they "weigh heavily" in favor of digital.

As for sharing, it happens automatically. If I buy it, she has access to it.

[Sirtel]

There are no other readers in my family, so no one to share books with. Reading has always been a private and solitary activity for me and I vastly prefer ebooks over paperbacks. I've never bought hardcovers. They take up too much space in my small apartment, they're heavy and impossible to hold with one hand, and they cost more than I'm willing to pay for a book.

[SteveEisenberg]

I'm not sure the 17 percent figure is reliable, but this would be enough to explain it:

The Kindle 5 was released on September 6, 2012 ($70 ad-supported . . .

Amazon's upgrade of the standard Kindle was released on June 22, 2016 in both black and white colors ($80 ad-supported . . .

You can't grow the market when the base model price is increasing in real dollars, and when you throw it in your heavy full-of-illustrated-textbooks book bag, it is just as liable to screen crack as ever.

We'll eventually see durable readers cheap enough to be sold as throw-aways holding a single novel with seven year life no-recharge batteries. But we may have to wait for eInk Pearl patents to expire. Fifteen more years?

This from the OP articles suggest that all-text paper books will eventually become a niche item, almost like vinyl records:

He, in common with most people involved with the publishing of physical books, reads on a Kindle, but afterwards buys the books he loves.

[ekbell]

Originally Posted by rhadin

There are a lot of good reasons to buy an ebook, but when I weigh those reasons against buying a print book, the balance has changed. When the Sony 505 came out, I bought it and started buying ebooks instead of print. But then I began facing some of the limitations of ebooks, such as not being able to share the books with my wife and son.

And, yes, I am aware of DRM removal but that not only requires additional work and know-how, but, more importantly, it still requires multiple reading devices. The argument that some make that my wife and son could read the books on their computers or smartphones that they already own doesn't make ebooks more desirable. Reading on the computer makes the ebooks nonportable (and have you tried reading on your desktop while in bed?). As for the smartphone, my son tried and thought it was one of the worst experiences in the world. He could only display a small portion of a page at a time.

I solved the problem of sharing ebooks with my husband and children by giving Kobos loaded with interesting books as Christmas and/or birthday presents. When they want a change of books my calibre library has both covers and summaries to aid in browsing. I admit that this solution was prompted by the large number of free/cheap books I had already obtained of interest to them (Baen CDs and free library, classic kids books, Father Brown mysteries, old books of folklore, ....) which meant that they were immediately appreciated.

[barryem]

I bought my first Kindle in 2009, November if I recall. I think I bought my second one about 3 or 4 months later to be able to lend books. I've never had less than two and usually more.

The result of lending books to my neighbors in my retirement home on my spare Kindle is that now quite a few of them have their own Kindles and their own Amazon accounts. So this sort of lending works well for everyone.

Barry

[cfrizz]

I call BS on that article.

The fact is that there will always be some dedicated PB only readers, but ebooks are here to stay regardless of how publishers try to spin it.

I got into reading ebooks on my pc in late 2009, bought my first Sony reader in early 2010 and haven't looked back.

Being able to take my over 1500 books with me where ever I go, and read on my any of my phones, mp3 player, tablets, or pc is priceless. I will never go back to reading paper books and I never read HCs so that doesn't matter to me.

[leebase]

Horse's for courses. I'm a phone and tablet reader. Never felt the need for an ereader. My wife and kids prefer pBooks. My mom loved the iPad and then the Kindle Fire 8 I have her to replace it.

I never liked hard backs for both price and size. Others love seeing Quality books on their book cases.

I don't think we are ever going to converge on a single preference. I used to think paper books would go away, not any more.

We just have more choices in how book content is delivered. A bigger threat to paper books or ebooks are all the other options for entertainment.

[Fbone]

My purchases since I bought my first ereader in 2010.

2012 - 11 books $14.88
2013 - 32 books $57.74
2014 - 20 books $20.74
2015 - 26 books $20.64
2016 - 11 books $10.61
2017 - 4 books $7.97

I've read 76 of the 104 books purchased. Every purchase was at least 35% off retail price. Most were 75% - 90% off.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

We'll eventually see durable readers cheap enough to be sold as throw-aways holding a single novel with seven year life no-recharge batteries. But we may have to wait for eInk Pearl patents to expire. Fifteen more years?

A device like that sounds terrible and I hope it never comes to fruition. At least crap books can be pulped. But millions of disposable e-readers holding Fifty Shades of Gray clogging up a landfill would be a disaster.

[pwalker8]

I doubt we will see throw away ebook readers.

Two points. First, I doubt everyone will agree on an interface. Heck, in the audiophile world there are still people who listen to music on records with big old tube based receivers and swear that it's the absolute best sound available. I suspect there are some who wish they could get all their reading material via illuminated manuscripts.

Second, I suspect that as more and more people grow up with smart phones and tablets, reading on such devices will be second nature to them. I see toddlers who are comfortable using an iPad. It's pretty hard to guess where we will be in 20 years.

[barryem]

The one book per device was tried by Playaway for audiobooks a number of years ago. I assumed they'd go under quickly for lack of interest but the last I heard they're still around. They never got very popular though and at best they must be a very small niche in the business.

With ebooks I don't think the same thing could work at all. The Playaway was a simple MP3 player and no screen was needed. My guess is the hardware cost was a small fraction of what a single book ereader would be. I doubt that will happen. And if it does I doubt that it has much chance of success. And if it succeeds I suspect it'll barely succeed. And if it succeeds in a big way I might be wrong.

Barry

[tomsem]

The device I use to read on changes chaotically (lately it has been over 90% on my Voyage, but it has been 90% on my phone in the past) but I'll never go back to print.

As Nate suggests there is every reason to think the death of ebooks is greatly exaggerated, as is widespread abandonment of digital reading in favor of print. Industry 'studies' are notoriously self-serving. But it makes for nice headline click bait.