Are e-Books Revitalizing Reading Culture?

As an increasing number of people turn to e-books and purchase e-reading devices, has the electronic boom revitalized the way we think about reading?

As neighborhood bookstores continue to struggle in light of the recession, many people are turning more and more to e-reading electronic devices. Biographies, literary fiction and educational resources are all available in the cheap e-book format, writes Dorene Internicola at Reuters.

“It’s really been all good news this year. Reading is becoming more popular in general,” said Chris Schluep, senior books editor at Amazon, the biggest online bookseller in the United States.

“It’s so easy to buy a book now… We’re seeing reading grow across the population.”

In the spring this year Amazon announced that for every 100 print books sold, it had sold 105 e-books for its Kindle device between April 1 and May 19.

Schluep calls 2011 a great year for literature and sees a trend towards more literary books, noting strong offerings from veteran novelists and first-timers alike.

The biggest industry trend Schlup has seen is for young adult series, such as the vampire novels of “Twilight” and the “Harry Potter” books.

“Everything is moving in that direction,” he said about the younger market.

This comes after an Education News interview with Karen Lotz, the President of Candlewick Press, the largest independent children’s publisher in the US.

In the interview Lotz explained how she feels over the next 3 to 5 years, digital will trump print.

“Currently a lot of adults, as well as teens, buy new young adult books in digital form, which is a really good thing in terms of expanding our market overall. Teens are purchasing more than ever before as reading devices proliferate.”

But she doesn’t believe we’re going to see the end of the bookstore and library quite yet:

“I believe brick and mortar outlets – and I love that you include libraries in that category – are going to be hugely important for the youngest readers going forward. The experience of being in a room full of books, for a child, is one of the most empowering and exciting experiences one can have.”

Comments

Joe

December 19, 2011 at 2:31 pm

I don’t think in the future the need to be in a room with books is going to be great enough to leave room in that “market” for both libraries and bookstores. As a matter of fact, Farhad Manjoo makes a pretty persvasive argument why that would actually not be a bad thing. Lotz is wrong: the brick-and-mortar bookstores are going to be increasingly irrelevant going forward as libraries and online bookstores take over the function a bookstore used to serve in the community.

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/12/independent_bookstores_vs_amazon_buying_books_online_is_better_for_authors_better_for_the_economy_and_better_for_you_.single.html

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Kevin

December 19, 2011 at 3:42 pm

Independent bookstores are not going to disappear, no matter how much Joe would like them to. I read the Manjoo article as well as some responses to it and the impression I got was that he was being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. Obviously, even Amazon thinks brick-and-mortar stores provide some value, otherwise they wouldn’t be running their discount promotion to lure customers away from there. Surely they understand the book business better than you, Joe, or Manjoo. There is a reason why small stores like that become legends in their neighborhoods. They bring together the community by holding readings, they provide recommendations beyond that of a algorithm. Not to mention the often underestimated but never replicated feeling of actually holding and smelling a book in your hand as you read. In light of that, it seems that the reports of bookstores’ imminent demise is premature.

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Joe

December 19, 2011 at 4:56 pm

Bookstores are businesses, not sacred cows. People forget that they are a means to an end, the end being either selling books or getting people to read more. They are not the end in and of themselves. It’s naive to pretend that one of the biggest technology revolutions in publishing (which digital publishing surely is) is going to have no impact on the way the books have been sold up to now. All the things being touted about the ye olde neighborhoode booke shoppe were originally introduced to SELL BOOKS. I think now trying to pretend that they have much value outside of that is a bit of ex post facto rationalizing. People buy more books now than they ever have, and digital book buyers buy more books after they switch to ebooks. It’s inevitable that the trend will continue and the bookstores as we know them now will become absolete.

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how to flunk social media + lose me as a potential True Fan (but you know I love you) | Justine Musk

December 24, 2011 at 10:21 am

[...] As a reader of literary fiction, I’m probably not the norm: although I do indeed love the smell of a physical book, the flick of the pages, the creak of the spine, the heft of the thing in my hands, I do most of my reading on my devices (pick one: my smartphone, my tablet, my Kindle Fire). I’m a social media enthusiast, live on the edge of the tech industry and spend a lot of time online, which might be why I consider this to be a good and exciting time to be a writer. (Since I became a Kindle convert a couple of years ago, I buy and read even more books, not less – and, judging from the data, this is typical.) [...]

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- Mimi
  
  March 27, 2012 at 11:45 am
  
  bumba より:Hi there, palla. I could survive there in Zambia, but was so out of it for a while after being back to Holland. It’s like nnvcenieot is unconvenient. Anyway, I’ll keep going to write about a report of Africa. That’s for sure.
  
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