A
2012 survey revealed that just 16% of Americans have actually purchased an
e-book.
Ever since Amazon introduced its popular Kindle
e-reader five years ago, pundits have assumed that the future of book
publishing is digital. Opinions about the speed of the shift from page to
screen have varied. But the consensus has been that digitization, having had
its way with music and photographs and maps, would in due course have its way
with books as well. By 2015, one media maven predicted a few years back, traditional
books would be gone.Half a decade into the e-book revolution, though, the prognosis for traditional books is suddenly looking brighter. Hardcover books are displaying surprising resiliency. The growth in e-book sales is slowing markedly. And purchases of e-readers are actually shrinking, as consumers opt instead for multipurpose tablets. It may be that e-books, rather than replacing printed books, will ultimately serve a role more like that of audio books—a complement to traditional reading, not a substitute.
How attached are Americans to old-fashioned books? Just look at the results of a Pew Research Center survey released last month. The report showed that the percentage of adults who have read an e-book rose modestly over the past year, from 16% to 23%. But it also revealed that fully 89% of regular book readers said that they had read at least one printed book during the preceding 12 months. Only 30% reported reading even a single e-book in the past year.
