Guardian Article: How eBooks Lost their Shine

Jason · Oct 8, 2018

The interesting aside here is the other digital venue of podcasting. Having created podcasts myself in the past, and shifting now to the consumption side of the equation, I find myself reading more eBooks than hard cover, but wishing there were good audio books along the lines of podcasting. For me Audible has been hit and miss, so the reason I am into eBooks (specifically Kindle) is due to the lack of other reliable consumption methods digitally.

So:
1. eBooks (Kindle)
2. Audible books
3. Real books

Gaston · Oct 29, 2018

PeteMC said:
The only ebooks I've ever read have been eARCs from publishers and some reference material I was given for free - I've never bought one, and don't own a reader.

I generally buy paperbacks as I find them easier to hold than weighty hardbacks, although if there's a book I *really* want that's only out in hardback then I'll buy it in that format.

Same as me. Ebooks have started their decline astonishingly early, stabilizing at around 20% of a declining overall fiction income (this data trend line ending in 2016), their heyday being about 2009-2015. Now it seems Ebooks keep falling, as novels finally rebound after 18 years of decline... I'll wait a few years for the US census stats to clear things up...

Some people tolerate Ebooks amazingly well, so they are here to stay. But compared to Audio Books they seem almost like a fad to me. Audio is booming like a rocket compared to everything: They are no fad (and listening to publishing industry meetings, they are well aware of this)...

https://youtu.be/uqefoZCp3X0

Gaston

ps. Brittle 1970s paper? I think someone is confusing binding glue brittleness with paper brittleness... Paper brittleness has long ago been exposed as a marketing and space-hungry librarian hoax...: See Baker's amazing "Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper".

Old Hack · Oct 30, 2018

Gaston said:
Same as me. Ebooks have started their decline astonishingly early, stabilizing at around 20% of a declining overall fiction income (this data trend line ending in 2016), their heyday being about 2009-2015. Now it seems Ebooks keep falling, as novels finally rebound after 18 years of decline... I'll wait a few years for the US census stats to clear things up...

Some people tolerate Ebooks amazingly well, so they are here to stay. But compared to Audio Books they seem almost like a fad to me. Audio is booming like a rocket compared to everything: They are no fad (and listening to publishing industry meetings, they are well aware of this)...

https://youtu.be/uqefoZCp3X0

Gaston

ps. Brittle 1970s paper? I think someone is confusing binding glue brittleness with paper brittleness... Paper brittleness has long ago been exposed as a marketing and space-hungry librarian hoax...: See Baker's amazing "Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper".

I was going to say that I disagree with you that fiction income is declining, and explain why, and discuss things with you properly. But then I tried to watch that YouTube link that you provide, but couldn't, because I found the speaker's delivery so drawn out and plodding. And then I realised it was familiar. So I had a look through your previous posts here, and found this:

Gaston said:
I explain it best in this video: https://youtu.be/uqefoZCp3X0

Gaston, stop using AW to drive viewers to your YouTube channel. It's deceptive and unhelpful. Put a link to it in your signature if you want, but stop doing this.

Guardian Article: How eBooks Lost their Shine

Jason

Ideas bounce around in my head

Gaston

Old Hack

Such a nasty woman