Print books

The UK print market has grown in value for a fourth year running, with 2018 showing a marginal volume increase too. Last year, 190.8 million books were sold for £1.63bn through Nielsen BookScan's TCM, a 2.14% increase in value and a 0.33% lift in volume against 2017. Average selling price also rose, with 2018's a.s.p of £8.53 a record high.

The media and entertainment industry has a long history of embracing disruptive innovations, from the printing press to the personal computer. But the rapid shift from physical to digital over the past decade or so has been truly revolutionary. In general, physical media has suffered a great deal.  Read more

Print books are dead! EbooksDigital bookstore selling wide range of ebooks in 50 categories from Hildegard of Bingen to How to Write a Dirty Story and showing how the range of ebooks available is growing. http://www.ebooks.com/ are dead! People don't read any more! Over the last few years in publishing and bookselling we've been assaulted by a rollcall of apparent certainties. As a creative industry wrought with hand-wringing good intentions we've suffered the harsh slap of reality with the growing pains of corporatisation, globalisation and the acceleration of technological change.

Amid the ongoing dirge for businesses the internet has decimated, books occupy a special place. From the parchments of the ancient Greeks to the Gutenberg Bible to the worldwide spread of lending libraries, books were arguably one of the primary engines of civilization's growth, spreading knowledge and delight to humanity.  Read more

Here are some things that you can't do with a Kindle. You can't turn down a corner, tuck a flap in a chapter, crack a spine (brutal, but sometimes pleasurable) or flick the pages to see how far you have come and how far you have to go. You can't remember something potent and find it again with reference to where it appeared on a right- or left-hand page. You often can't remember much at all.  Read more