The Religious Book Market
13 April 2018
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Ebook vs Paperbook

Overall, after the actual decline of the e-readers, people have grown weary to the point that for new generations the Kindle serves as a corny, classless object, while the paper book takes its place in the hearts of readers especially among younger generations. It is also necessary to take into account the current phenomenon aiming at trying to limit the time spend on the “screens”, to combine with the eye fatigue that produces the reading on screen [1]. Finally the last cause explaining the lack of enthusiasm of Ebooks is their price, indeed the recent contractual requirements binding Amazon (which is the ultra-majority seller of Ebooks in the world) and the authors have increased – and standardized – the price of Ebook by + 7%, bringing the price of the latter closer to that of paper books, sometimes even identical or more expensive in some cases [2].

So the book industry is doing well, in fact it is stabilizing. If the arrival of tablets and Ebooks seemed to predict the death of the book, the current reality shows that the trend is reversed, with a fall of 40% sales of reading Kindle type between 2011 and 2016 [3]. The sale of Ebooks fell 17% in the United Kingdom and 19% in the United States for the same period [4]. On the other hand, sales of paper books are increasing in France (+ 4%), the United Kingdom (+ 4%) [5] and the United States (+ 7.5%) [6].

 

[1] The Guardian

[2] The Guardian

[3] CNN

[4] CNN, The Guardian

[5] The Guardian

[6] CNN

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