Leave it to the trend of vintage hipsters to kill eBooks. As you’ve probably seen, people are turning back to vinyl, cassettes, reading and writing on paper and riding vintage bikes. The Publishers Association has unveiled some figures that show digital sales may have increased, but sales of eBooks are dropping.
Around $2.3 billion worth of digital sales have been made over the past year and the sales of eBooks have dropped 3% during 2016. Old fashioned physical book sales have risen by 6%, reaching $4.51 billion. This is not a new trend, as it’s actually the second year that sees sales of electronic books dropping. Physical children books are doing particularly well, while fiction books are doing badly in digital form, dropping 16% last year.
With all the studies and news about how screens are affecting our mood, sleep and brain, people are now more conscious and cautious and going back to paper. Screen tiredness and an alternative to watching a screen all day are also important. Printed books also make nicer gifts than vouchers for eBooks, to be honest. My main problem with this is that you can still read an eBook with the lights shut, while a regular book requires light to read.
