August 18, 2015 
mhoogland 
E-readers like Amazon’s Kindle have forever changed the publishing world, but are we seeing the beginning of the end of the e-reader? Amazon has been getting its fair share of bad press lately, and now it can apparently add declining Kindle sales to its list of troubles.
I absolutely loved Jennifer Maloney’s piece in The Wall Street Journal, and in my opinion, I think she is right: the phone will drive future book sales—not the e-reader. With our increasingly mobile lifestyle, convenience and the ability to multitask are king, and our phones afford us both. I bought the iPhone 6 Plus, in part, so I could take advantage of the huge screen and read whenever I had a moment, which is exactly what I’ve done. My Kindle has been useless ever since (and to be honest, I think I lost it but don’t really care). Carrying around a phone and an e-reader seems counterproductive when just one can easily accomplish the task.
I’m very curious to see how publishers take advantage of this burgeoning trend to package books for the mobile phone. Amazon’s dominance in the book and e-book marketplace began, in part, because of the Kindle and the necessity for a complete book buying ecosystem to accompany the e-reader. Amazon’s Fire phone was a bust, so what does it mean for the retail giant as Apple, Google, and other players continue to flesh out their bookstores and build up lively reader communities for phone readers?
How do you read e-books? An e-reader? Tablet? Smartphone? Over someone else’s shoulder? Oh, and this drinkable book is amazing. Just another reason why print books are best.
I have a Kindle app on my iPhone, but actually I make Siri read to me with the Voiceover function.
I originally downloaded the free Kindle app on my iPhone, when I wanted to read books that weren’t available in print. When my husband got me a Kindle, I preferred that to reading on the tiny screen. I now have a Kindle Fire and use that for reading and also proofreading my own manuscripts before sending them off to my editor. When I upgraded to an iPhone 5, it came with iBooks, but the only books I have on there are my galley proofs that I get from my editor. I use it to quickly spot any formatting errors, but the print is too small to read and it’s too much work swiping after each paragraph.
I buy the majority of my books on Kindle, unless it’s available in paperback and the Kindle price is over $5.99 then I might buy the paperback. I rarely buy hardcover anymore, unless it’s a picture book, but since my youngest is in 8th grade, I don’t buy a lot of picture books anymore. The other times I buy paperback is when I’m at an author signing or I enter and win a giveaway.
I’m using Audible more and more with my iPhone. I do have a Kindle and read that a lot more now than I do hardcovers or paperback. I don’t like reading on my iPhone much since it’s so small, but I love the Audible app.
I think that Kindle sales are starting to plateau. A lot of my indie published friends have seen slowing sales. The market is more competitive and readers realize they now have hundreds of Kindle books on their e-readers, and need to stop buying so they can actually start reading some of them.