If you had asked me to hazard a guess about how this poll would go this year, I would have said this: “After an e-book uptick related to the pandemic and a hesitancy to shop in physical stores, things are probably returning to normal and paper will again reign supreme.”
Well…kind of?
The paper dead enders continue to hover in the 39-43% range since a recent high in 2017 and stand at 40% this year, but there’s a sharp downtick in pro-e-bookers to 39.6% from a pandemic high of 48%. Mainly because there were quite a few more people in the fence sitting crowd (14.9% “maybes” this year compared to 8.9% in 2021).
What do you make of these results? Do they track with your experience?
And Happy Thanksgiving to my American readers! I’ll be back next Monday.
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Years ago, I would have been firmly in the paper-only camp. I was gradually seduced by the benefits of having multiple books in a single object. And then, as my aging hands began to object to the strain of holding large, heavy books open (I’m looking at you, Stephen King), I acknowledged that it’s much nicer to read on a kindle. The biggest drawbacks to ebooks now (for me) are being unable to quickly flip back and forth, to hold two different locations open to compare something, and to locate some bit of information that I remember by a visual cue.
Interesting! Though, as usual, I note the absence of papyrus, stone tablet, or smoke signal options. Or I could just recite my WIP in Times Square and call it an audio book.
Ha!
I almost exclusively read with my earballs rather than my eyeballs. I switched from physical books around 2011. As I’ve aged, I’ve found eyeball reading makes me drowsy, unless I want it to. I use Bose Bluetooth headphones to facilitate my earball reading while riding my bike, riding my bike that goes nowhere, or playing golf. It makes those activities doubly productive.
As book type becomes smaller, I appreciate the ability to adjust type size in an eBook. It also gives me the option to slip a Kindle into my purse to read on the go. Fantasy tomes are just too large to carry comfortably. I read fast, so having the next book at my fingertips is a plus. On the flip side, I buy most of my non-fiction in physical book form. I like to mark them up, sometimes with diagrams, and notes on the eBook don’t cut it. And sometimes the graphs and pics can’t be pinched and enlarged. A definite drawback.
I suspect I’m buying more ebooks currently than paper books because my shelves (and house) are FULL. I continue to buy print for the books that I value the highest and that I know I will be studying closely, because ebooks just can’t equal the efficiency of printed books. You can browse forward, go back to review, check the contents, flip pages with ease, whereas searching ebooks can be a hassle. And footnotes still are a mess of trouble in ebooks. Also, trade paperbacks are lighter than the too-heavy kindle fire.