I hypothesize that the kind of reader who wants a physical copy of a book is much happier to get a hardcover. I know I’ve personally lever liked the cheap flimsiness of mass market paperbacks and I don’t read frequently enough for the higher price of a hardcover to matter.
The kind of person who wants the cheapest possible book moved from mass market paperbacks to e-readers.
There was a recent article probably posted here about how UHD 4K Blu-ray sales are increasing over time, somewhat counter to what the average person might assume. I think this analogy works reasonably well. The 4K UHD buyer fits a niche of someone who isn’t satisfied by streaming. They want a keepsake physical piece of media with beautiful box art and the highest quality picture and sound available.
In contrast, the kind of person who would have bought DVDs from the Walmart bin has almost certainly moved to digital. They never cared about the quality of the media, they just wanted a low price with a lot of convenience.
If you did a PCA on the reasons reading has gone down, this would get a very low score.
I can take most young people today, give them access to all the paperbacks in the world (and despite the point of the article, it is very easy to find paperbacks!) and their reading will barely change.
The culture has shifted. Screens are a likely problem.
I’d love to read more books on paper but purely from a utilitarian standpoint, the UK’s race to enormous books (both hardback and paperback) makes it unworkable. Some of the latest books are more like pulpit bibles than something I can toss in a bag for the commute.
In my mind the problem is that those buyers have better places to go than mass market paperbacks.
Someone like you who cares about practicality of “tossing in a bag for a commute” is better served by an e-reader.
Someone who finds hardcovers and big paperbacks too expensive or ungainly, again, better served by e-readers.
Someone who wants the cheapest price possible: e-readers.
That leaves the physical book buyer in much be same niche as a vinyl or 4K UHD Blu-ray buyer. They aren’t buying for convenience and the way the physical object looks and performs matters a lot more than convenience.
Missing from the article is the role of ebooks.
I hypothesize that the kind of reader who wants a physical copy of a book is much happier to get a hardcover. I know I’ve personally lever liked the cheap flimsiness of mass market paperbacks and I don’t read frequently enough for the higher price of a hardcover to matter.
The kind of person who wants the cheapest possible book moved from mass market paperbacks to e-readers.
There was a recent article probably posted here about how UHD 4K Blu-ray sales are increasing over time, somewhat counter to what the average person might assume. I think this analogy works reasonably well. The 4K UHD buyer fits a niche of someone who isn’t satisfied by streaming. They want a keepsake physical piece of media with beautiful box art and the highest quality picture and sound available.
In contrast, the kind of person who would have bought DVDs from the Walmart bin has almost certainly moved to digital. They never cared about the quality of the media, they just wanted a low price with a lot of convenience.
If you did a PCA on the reasons reading has gone down, this would get a very low score.
I can take most young people today, give them access to all the paperbacks in the world (and despite the point of the article, it is very easy to find paperbacks!) and their reading will barely change.
The culture has shifted. Screens are a likely problem.
I’d love to read more books on paper but purely from a utilitarian standpoint, the UK’s race to enormous books (both hardback and paperback) makes it unworkable. Some of the latest books are more like pulpit bibles than something I can toss in a bag for the commute.
In my mind the problem is that those buyers have better places to go than mass market paperbacks.
Someone like you who cares about practicality of “tossing in a bag for a commute” is better served by an e-reader.
Someone who finds hardcovers and big paperbacks too expensive or ungainly, again, better served by e-readers.
Someone who wants the cheapest price possible: e-readers.
That leaves the physical book buyer in much be same niche as a vinyl or 4K UHD Blu-ray buyer. They aren’t buying for convenience and the way the physical object looks and performs matters a lot more than convenience.
Not sure why a political rag is posted here