Clearly, books are not dead. Nor has the book apocalypse (bookopalypse?) taken place as predicted when ebooks started popping as PDFs, ePubs and .Mobi files. If anything, book sales are experiencing a healthy upswing again. The only people that seem to be reading ebooks is Gen-Xers like me.
According to Nielsen Book Data (2022), 80% of book buyers aged 14-25 preferred print book formats to 30% who prefer ebooks and 18% who prefer audiobooks. The 14-25 segment purchased 61 millions books, spending £496m. A big chunk of that was YA fiction, romance and Graphic Novels. Older peeps preferred genre fiction like crime, sf and horror. People in their 30s account for 23% of all book sales. It seems COVID-19 also had a positive impact on reading, as more people turned to reading to while away some of those long, lonely hours. However, whilst people may be buying more books, according to a 2021 Gallup poll they don’t seem to be reading them much. LitHubs Emily Temple (2022) notes that Americans are reading less than they have in 30 years, with theve average consumption down to 12.6 books per person in 2021. She makes several guesses as to why this is the case, including: book buyers not having the time, or some book buyers spending more on books whilst the rest of us turn to Netflix, or its just another social media trend.
My own reading habits tend towards reading ebooks on my phone, even though I have a Kindle. The phone is always in my pocket and I have my ereader set to night mode so that it doesn’t drain the battery or cause my eyes to strain. I still prefer to read fantasy fictions, some sf and occasionally a bit of crime or horror. I haven’t bought a physical fiction book in a while. I’m running out of space on my bookcases and it’s rarely convenient to grab a paperback these days. My academic reading tends to be journal articles, which mostly come as PDFs and are easier to navigate on my laptop. I still buy Islamic books as physical copies (mostly histories) as reading PDFs on my phone just doesn’t cut it for me.
What are your book reading habits? What do your read, which format, where and when? Share your thoughts in the comments and give me a like if you enjoyed this little bit of reading.
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One of my favourite things to do is to curl up on my sofa with a book and a cup of hot chocolate. Taking a book on my daily commutes makes me feel I have a piece of home with me.
Library books also evoke feelings of nostalgia. As a child I was always curious about the previous readers A forgotten piece paper, a reciept or a scribble would feed my curiosity further as I read. .
I do read audiobooks on my phone from time to time but it’s not the same as owning a book or even reading a borrowed book from the library. Swiping left whilst your phone rotates accidently when you change positions isn’t ideal. Don’t get me started on the battery life.
So yyes I believe books are here to stay.