People still buy printed books in 2018 and appear to prefer them to all other media. The growth of e-books sales appears to have plateaued, but audiobook sales have been climbing rapidly. All other media sales have been disrupted by comprehensive subscriptions offering large libraries of movies, shows, or music for a monthly fee. E-books have these plans too, but they haven’t taken off with readers possibly because the selection isn’t good enough yet.
“There’s another factor that continues to support the sale of physical books: the stubborn survival of booksellers, especially the independents that have endured a series of onslaughts.”
Those booksellers–standing behind Hadrian’s wall against the rest of the world–you have to love ’em.
In other news, a new survey says teens aren’t reading.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/08/20/study-teens-text-and-use-social-media-instead-of-reading-books/
“In the 1970s, about 60 percent of high school seniors reported reading a book, magazine or newspaper every day. Four decades later, in 2016, 16 percent of high school seniors reported doing so.”