Books, Like the Phoenix, Are Rising from the Ashes:
Written by Howard Fenton
Senior Technology Consultant, NAPL
There has been a lot of gloom and doom predictions about the future of books, but the latest data suggests that books, like the phoenix, may be rising from the ashes and reborn.
Some critics have said that book sales and book readership are dying. Others have said that the future of books is not printed books, but electronic books. The most recent evidence suggests that neither is true. Books are not dying and electronic versions of books are not displacing printed versions of books. According to the Association of American publisher’s report on the 2012 sales, book sales are up 7.4%, which amounts to $451 million in additional revenue for total sales of $6.5 billion.
