Is the E-Reader Dead?

Ah, the simple pleasure of a book. The slow pace of the drama, clearly printed words, the flash of the screen as you share a particularly moving passage in social networks

Yes, reading is a bit different now than what it was ten years ago. While print books work surprisingly well, larger, better-looking smartphones have given e-books a second life. After 10 years of insecurity, it seems we finally live in a world where printed and digital book readers can live in peace among them. Nobody will leave soon.

And yet, this otherwise happy story can have a tragic understatement. While e-books work well, the amount of gadgets devoted solely to these e-books is much grimmer. E-ink readers like Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook are far less common than they were, and we can say that they are much less necessary.

If you have not seen your smartphone since 2007, you've forgotten the modest ink drive E, also known as e-reader. Basically, digital books use these devices to simulate a technology called digital ink to feel and look like a physical book on paper.

"The Kindle device is designed specifically for reading, so you can fully immerse yourself in a copyright story." The Kindle does not distract readers from social networks, emails, and text messages, "said an Amazon representative at Tom's Guide,


Ten years ago, the Kindle was essentially the only game in town for e-books. But now it's so easy to read on your computer, tablet, phone, or even three, thanks to compatible applications. (It is notable, too, that the dangers of reading on LCD screens are greatly exaggerated).

In a world where comfort is king and where reward delay is a dirty term is room for a device that does only one thing and can do almost as fast as the supercomputer of your bag?

Less readers, less e-readers

Electronic readers serve a diminishing audience. More than a quarter of American UU adults in 2016 did not read books; Of the 74% who did, some read a book "partially". The average American reader UU finish four to 12 pounds a year, depending on whether you go with the median or mean. The number of reading and read persons has steadily declined since the early 1980s.

A few years ago, e-readers were more than just another exciting innovation. They were also good shops. For a short time - from 2011 to 2014, over - it was a real horse race between Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Sony, and Kobo in the electronic reading market. The sale of equipment exploded as well as the sale of e-books.

Then something strange happened: the electronic book sales more stabilized or less, but the electronic readers have made a big leap forward. In 2010, Amazon shipped 10.1 million Kindle, accounting for only 63% of e-readers shipped worldwide, meaning that there were some legitimate competitors. In 2011, Kindle's sales increased to 23.2 million. However, after a drastic decline in 2012 and a steady decline since, Amazon only sent 7.1 million Kindle in 2016.

The hard numbers are difficult at Barnes & Noble, but digital distribution companies (nodules, e-books, and all related utensils) decreased by 23% between 2016 and 2017. The company's sales to obtain relatives at Nook have been reduced more than six times, in the last five years.

The logical conclusion was that the manufacturers had done their job too well. After all, electronic readers are not powerful devices. If you buy one, it could take years without giving you a real reason for the update. However, the data suggest that the ownership of the electronic reader has fallen sharply. People have not only failed to buy new equipment; They seemed to be actively giving up the old ones.

Only 19% of adult Americans had an electronic book reader in 2015, and the numbers did not vary significantly by gender, location or age. Twenty-seven percent of the rich people who had participated in the survey, an electronic book reader, and by far the most enthusiastic buyer. Compare and contrast: 68 percent of American-owned smartphones in the same year, and 87 percent of affluent people, according to the Pew Research Center.

Who still uses electronic readers?

Neither Amazon nor Barnes & Noble shared the sales data with me. To get a rough idea of the number of people still using e-readers, I went straight to the source: a real live author.

Erica Kudisch is a writer, librettist and director based in New York. (In the interest of complete disclosure, even if I chose a musical based on Inception Christopher Nolan.) Kudisch works with Riptide Publishing, a small organization specializing in LGBT romances, but also in science-fiction, fantasy and science Western and another genre-fiction.

At least for Kudish, e-readers are an integral part of how your audience consumes books.

"I'd say I get as many books on the Kindle as in all other formats," he said. "I sell about two-thirds [more] books in digital form than on paper." Although he can not share specific numbers, Kudish has access to very specific statistics, including those who read his books in Kindle electronic readers rather than Kindle apps for smartphones.

This will not surprise anyone who knows about the history of electronic readers. While you can buy almost anything today on a Kindle or Nook, the technology was primarily the domain of romantic novelists.

"I would say that romance readers are especially gluttonous readers, and especially voracious readers tend to save their space," he said. (The grandmother of his wife is one of those readers, with many surplus romance novels in a bathtub).

Sci-fi and fantasy readers, Kudisch explained, play a role in the survival of the e-reader.

"Science fiction and fantasy books are usually the best," he says. "It's a lot easier to put a door stop on your Kindle."

Real intrusions
Real life also affects our ability to read for pleasure. Without going into unsustainable details, there is a lot of bad juju in the world today. To stay informed about this bad juju, people with a social conscience feel they need to stick to the news rather than the bestsellers.

"Conscious people who want to read and retreat to other worlds feel that they can no longer escape to other worlds," Kudisch said. "It's weirder than fiction."

"It's very difficult to read an escape if you have to follow political reading," Kudish continued. "We spend a lot of time fighting, it's hard to spend time reading ... When readers are in decline, they blame politics. Give us the time that we feel during our reading time with Twitter to be connected. "

An uncertain future
Gender fiction, as we have noted, is a key component to the survival of the electronic reader. This is especially beneficial for authors like Kudisch, whose books do not fit perfectly into one genre or another. Kudisch describes his second book, "Do not feed the trolls," which focuses on a queer face to face player of your favorite MMO and falls in love, with a tone lift being more than the lift goes up.


It could be argued that a smartphone or tablet would provide many opportunities for genre authors and readers to find each other, but remember: Kudu readers usually do not buy their books on smartphones. These customers buy their books in Kindles. Whatever your reasoning is, the bottom line is that eReaders help customers find and experience books in ways that smartphones just do not have.

Although e-ink readers are the best way to experiment with an eBook, the chances for inventive technology are at best uncertain. The reader does not work; Sales of e-readers are weak; E-book sales are low (even if they are slow). As a culture, we seem to decide that we do not want to read books, and we certainly do not want to spend another $ 100 on it.

"There is definitely a future in online reading," Kudisch said. "It remains to be seen whether electronic readers will be available."