Several months back, it was noted on
this blog that e-book growth seemed to be stalling significantly. Culture and technology watcher Nicholas Carr, in his post The flattening of e-book sales,
notes that the trend continues:
“The Association of American Publishers reports that in the first quarter of 2013, e-book sales in the U.S. trade market grew by just 5 percent over where they were in the same period in 2012. The explosive growth of the last few years has basically petered out, according to the AAP numbers (see graph)”
In another surprise, the Wall Street Journal recently
reported about The
New Explosion in Audio Books:
“Audio books have gone mass-market. Sales have jumped by double digits in recent years. Shifts in digital technology have broadened the pool of potential listeners to include anyone with a smartphone.”
The detailed article also reports on some of the unique approaches
of some of the newer audiobooks, including the creation of works that feature
only as audiobooks, “ranging from full-cast dramatizations in the style of old
school radio plays, complete with music and sound effects, to young adult
novels, thrillers and multipart science fiction epics.” Other innovations include the ability for
persons to switch between an e-book and the audio version, picking up the story
in either fashion wherever they left off.
As such, the article also
explores how, for many, the line between listening to a book and reading it is
disappearing.
Also worthy of note for academic libraries: even as many academic
libraries move to make serious academic books available through e-book
databases, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Students
Prefer Print for Serious Academic Reading.
Reasons given for this are the distraction caused by embedded links, an
inability to interact with the content as easily as printed texts, and perhaps,
the students report, not having used e-books when they were younger.
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Graph from Nicholas Carr’s blog: http://www.roughtype.com/?p=3590
