Even with the advent of eBooks and a growing market for audiobooks, traditional print books are still in the realm of relevance.
According to Forbes, “In 2017, [print book] sales increased 1.9 percent over 2016… they increased 3.3 percent in 2016 over 2015.”
“Three-quarters of the way through 2018, unit sales of print books were up 2.5 percent over the January through September period in 2017…” said Publishers Weekly.
Unlike newspapers, print books are not dying a slow, agonizing death. For the reasons I’ll get into shortly, eBooks, audiobooks and the Internet have failed to kill off physical books.
But why is that? How are print books surviving when other physical publications like newspapers are declining?
Is it that print books have adapted to the changing market? The answer to that is no; books haven’t really changed much over the years. They’re still the same traditional paperback or hardback books with pages made from trees. The fundamental concepts are still the same, yet people still prefer them.
What it really boils down to, I think, is preference. Not everyone enjoys reading books off of a Kindle or an iPad, as those can cause eye strain.
Print books, on the other hand, are typically easier on the eyes and don’t need to be charged like a Kindle or an iPad. As long as you have a source of light, print books can be read and enjoyed anywhere without a headache.
Some people simply just like having a physical book in their hands as opposed to an image file on a mobile device.
What also could be keeping print books alive is the social currency people can gain from reading. People young and old alike can read print books anywhere without being looked down on.
On the contrary, reading is something seen as a pastime of smart people trying to enrich their knowledge. It certainly beats playing games on a phone.
But how often do you see people reading newspapers? It’s rare to ever see anyone who grew up in the digital age reading a newspaper. To a lot of people, newspapers are relics that only the older people in society really care about.
Print books don’t invoke that same attitude. The negative stigma around newspapers isn’t helped by the bad reputation of mainstream media sources or the tendency of people to simply just read headlines.
These things, and the simple nature and ease of use that print books offer, is the reason that they are still relevant today.
The survival of physical, print books is a wonderful thing. Technology is great and eBooks and audiobooks have made reading easier in some regards, but it’s nice to see people take a simpler approach and pick up a paperback book and read away.
No batteries, no screens, no ads, no headphones – just a bunch of paper bound together that tells a great story.
I hope that we, as a society, never lose that sense of simplicity.
