According
to research from, industry associations, 70% of the revenue from music sales is
from a digital source. 59% of the home
video market revenue is from digital. As
those two areas continue to grow, digital book sales for trade publishers
declined in 2015 to 20% of overall book trade revenue. Why?
Digital
music comes due to cost, availability, ease of use and other factors. Movie streaming or downloads comes for the
same reason. CDs, DVDs and the clunky
devices used to listen and watch them seem to be on their way out. But with books, people prefer paper – and are
willing to pay more for it.
There
may even be a digital backlash going on.
Everyone
is so used to and dependent upon their devices.
The check them constantly. The
country just stares at technology all the time.
Click here, download that. From work to entertainment, from desktop and
laptop to smartphones and tablets.
Screens of all sizes and shapes are everywhere. We may suffer eye fatigue and brain drain as
a result of constantly being tethered to a device.
Digital
content – audio, video, and text – is burdening us. There is tons of free content out there –
taking away time from potential book-buying readers. It also negates some potential book
sales. After all, why pay for the milk
when you get the cow for free?
We
are moving further into being a digital society. There are lots of advantages to this but we
can’t ignore certain realities, including:
·
Our
fingers, eyes, and brains need a break from focusing on whatever comes from a
digital device.
·
We
need a physical world to co-exist along with digital – from human touch to
brick and mortar stores to how we read our newspapers, magazines and books that
need to remain in print.
·
Even
though online we feel next door to someone half way around the world, geography
still matters. You still live in a
physical community –join it and be present.
Don’t just tune it out and disappear online.
There
is evidence of a device peak. A few
studies a year ago shared:
·
40%
own game controls – down from 2009.
·
14%
own portable gaming device – down from 2009.
·
73%
own laptop or desktop computers down from 20122.
·
40%
own MP3 players – down from 2010.
·
19%
own e-book readers – down from 2013
·
45%
own a tablet – that’s still rising, but at a much slower rate than just a few
years ago.
Smart
phone ownership is still growing. 68% of
Americans have one. Just 8% of the
country does not have a cell phone.
We
always hear the phrase: “Think out of
the box,” but many people feel they live in a digital box, always checking
something on a device or screen. We’re
addicted. We go from checking our
smartphone to logging into our laptop to streaming something to emailing a
funny video link to posting on Facebook to scanning Twitter to sharing photos
to shopping online to learning a new software program to downloading music to
reading a blog to searching for people we haven’t spoken to in 15 years to…
It
goes on and on. From morning to night in
the middle of things we should be engaged in.
Soon we will all have ADHD.
The
reprinted book is a beautiful thing. For
people who read for pleasure, reading off-line could be a treat. Some things have to be digital-blogs, email,
movies…but something like a book gives us the option to consume content away
from a screen or device. I know some people prefer e-books for a variety of
reasons but apparently more people for more reasons prefer printed books.
Will
we see a digital overload or backlash with other things? Eventually, yes. There’s just too much content to consume and
not enough time, money or brain-span to process it all. What could be the first to go or suffer? We’ll see, but for now, print books look like
they come out ahead when digital fatigue settles in.
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Brian Feinblum’s views,
opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his
employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him
at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the
third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog 2016 ©.
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marketing blogs by Book Baby
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