American readers still prefer printed books over eBooks

It's interesting to note that The Verge uses the word "prefer" in the title of their article but the underlying Pew Research report[1] does not have that word anywhere.

What Pew did was telephone some people asking them how often they read and also whether the format was ebook or paper. It seems logical to infer a "preference" from the answers to those questions. However, it's not that simple because a major reason people read "paper" is the higher cost of ebooks (which also includes the significant cost of a Kindle device.)

In other words, the economics of paper vs ebooks may be skewing why more people read hardcopy books instead of electronic ones. (E.g. If you telephone people asking them what car they drive, more will respond with Kia and Cheverolet but that does not mean people prefer them over Lexus and BMW.)

To extract a pure preference, it seems like you'd have to devise a marketing experiment which disguises the costs like this:

Choice A: $450 for 50 New York Times best sellers in paperback format.

Choice B: $450 for a Kindle preloaded with the same 50 ebooks.

Then you observe which package actually sells the most. We'd then see if more people value the paperback with the ability to resell, the tactile sensation, the simplicity of no batteries more than the e-reader with the minimal space & weight, the font size adjustability, the searchability, the ability to load more ebooks after the 50 preloaded ones, etc.

The above experiment may also have different outcomes depending on genre (fiction/novels, non-fiction/college textbooks) and age group (20-something, over-50, etc).

[1]Pew Research pdf downloadable here: http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/09/01/book-reading-2016/#the...

My personal experience, from having been an e-book aficionado who eventually went back to almost entirely paper (cheap used hardcover when I can find it):

Ebook advantages:

- Cheap, no commitment, try before you buy

- Easy to transport, take 30+ books on vacation with no increase in weight

Dead-tree advantages:

- Higher retention of material (various cues for memory related to the physicality and layout of the book versus an indistinguisable smorgasbord of ebook pages)

- Greater tendency to actually read, since they sit around your house/living room taunting you, rather than being forgotten in some obscure folder of your device

This probably isn't surprising to most people.

Ebooks are great when you need to occasionally reference random parts or if you're performing a search for specific content.

But with physical books... It just feels better. I don't even know how to describe it. I think I just perform the action with different expectations.

On top of that, and this is probably a silly point, I love the sense of ownership you get when you hold the real book. It's hard for me to feel a strong sense of ownership over a PDF.

I don't know if this is a common sentiment or not, but I believe that upon purchasing a physical book you should be entitled to a digital copy as well.

I wonder how audiobooks stack up. I know that a couple friends of mine love listening to audiobooks, and I listen to around ~100 hours per month. Audiobooks are great when you have to commute, when you don't have anyone to share your meal with, or just when you're out for a run.

Something I've noticed is that I find it hard to consume certain kinds of books using specific mediums, depending on the scenario. For example, I would never be able to pick up a technical or serious topic with an audiobook, I basically only listen to scifi and fantasy. With technical books, if it's a topic where I'll be interacting heavily with the computer (e.g. by writing and trying lots of examples), it ends up feeling better to use a digital book. I think physical books are the best for when I'm reading about a topic that requires me to just sit and think about the specific topic.

Although, interestingly enough, my main method of consumption of random research papers is digital. I wonder if my retention and understanding would improve if I printed em out instead of reading off my laptop.

Luckily, I think all mediums can co-exists. I think they fill different niches.

Glad to hear it, even though I am not really surprised.

eBooks have several well-known advantages, but for all their worth and utility, there are some areas in which they just cannot match real books.

To name but one: multi-sensory input. Humans are designed to experience the world around them with as many senses as possible. Physical books can stimulate up to four of our five senses. Sight (obviously), hearing (the rustling of pages), touch (the feel of paper, the relative thickness of the part of the book you've already read vs. what is still unread) and (especially on older books) smell.

eBooks only really offer sight, and, to a very limited extent, touch. That this paucity of sensuous input does not satisfy us as much as a physical book should not come as a surprise.

It is nice to be able to buy used books. The problem with e-books is that they were designed to cut out those historical rights to lend and resell. Turns out: people don't like them as much that way. Oops.

Personally I think the UI and UX of a paperback is really hard to beat.

While this indicates that there are lots of people who never read ebooks, it does not actually say whether more ebooks or print books are being sold and read. The Pew survey notes that the mean number of books read is 12, while the median is 4. This means that one-half of all readers surveyed read no more than 4 books a year, so the other half of all readers must average over 16 books a year. It's probably even more skewed than that, although numbers are hard to come by. This skewing of the book market probably accounts for the fact that ebooks are far greater than 28% of book sales, although accurate figures are hard to come by for several reasons (sales reports from industry groups don't include self-published authors, the fastest growing part of the business, for example). However, it looks like people who read fewer books are probably much less likely to switch to ebooks, possibly because the change costs time or money, possibly because people who read fewer books are probably on the whole less technologically adept than people who read more. Also, print books are still assigned from an early age in most schools, with ebooks being a secondary alternative in education, meaning that people still start with print books and that nearly everyone reads some print books unless they are very uneducated.

No real surprise. E-ink readers are still only available with black and white displays. Their screens are mostly shaped to fit a small paperback.

Physical books, in contrast, come in an infinite variety of shapes and sizes. Yes, tablets come in larger sizes and with high resolution colour screens, but they still aren't as comfortable to read as paper or even e-ink displays.

I still buy printed books because I refuse to pay for DRM enabled ebooks and I can't find a good source of DRM free books, other than project Gutemberg.

A printed book you can lend to others and will outlast any digital device or DRN platform.

I will always prefer physical books. Way back in the 80s when I was in grade school, books were my only form of entertainment that didn't require me to leave my bedroom (extreme introvert speaking here). Plus, there's the irresistible smell of the ink, glue, and bleached paper.

Yeah people have the right to ne stupid.