September 24, 2015 
John 
As the press has noted, with the passing of Yogi Berra, we’ve lost not only a baseball legend, but a legendary quipster, whose wit and wisdom (real or attributed) applies to so much beyond baseball. And one of his most famous Yogisms, “It ain’t over till it’s over” came to mind yesterday when I saw the front page article on the Times proclaiming that, hey, print isn’t dead after all!
Now, anyone who’s been keeping up with this blog and publishing news in general already knows that e-book sales have plateaued, and that both print and bookstores have had a nice resurgence over the past year. But as they usually do, the Times provides a nice overview, especially when it points out that the ABA counts 300 new independent bookstores since 2010, and that the big publishers are expanding their warehouse space to keep up with demand. And in their even-handed way, the Times does point out that both new e-readers and pricing could lead to an e-book resurgence, though I find it hard to imagine the $50 Kindle will lead the way…
Instead, I wonder if most people will end up as hybrid readers—e-books for travel, work, maybe for certain genres, and print for the rest. You might draw a parallel of sorts to the record biz, where hipsters gather physical vinyl for home listening but use Spotify on the go. If that becomes the new normal, then maybe the more prescient Yogism here would be “It’s deja vu all over again…”
Anyway, I’d love to know your thoughts on this. Has anyone ditched e-books completely at this point, or vice versa? If so, why? And if you’re a hybrid reader, how do you divvy up your reading between print and e?
The analysis that e-book sales have plateaued is incorrect. Howey’s data crawlers poke many holes in that belief by using data snarfed from Amazon and Barnes and Nobel. While it is true that ebooks with ISBNs from certain publishers have plateaued, likely from their disastrous flirtation with agency pricing, e-books outside those parameters sales are on the increase.
In any event, I am a whyspersync reader. I use Amazon’s Wyspersync to flip between the audiobook, my Kindle, my laptop, my phone and my iPad.
I buy physical books when the eBook price is too high or I want to lend it out to people after I am done reading it. The vast majority of my book buying dollars are e-books priced $2.99 to $4.99.
They majority of my readers are Kindle readers, but I make almost as much money from audiobook sales. Informal polling says my Kindle readers either read off a dedicated Kindle, or their iPad. The iPad, while it is not an e-ink device, is pretty nice for book reading.
Almost always I prefer print books to ebooks, but I do love ebooks for the portability and accessibility of books I can’t easily find in the library and have affordable digital prices.
The books I buy in print are the ones I love and want to share, and this shareability is still a major obstacle that digital publishing needs to reduce.
I think this shift represents a lot of readers across the spectrum realizing they were missing a lot of content by trying to cram their favorite lit onto a mobile device; the social media crack pipe is just too close, and a lot of readers felt they’d had a lot less interesting day by trying to do it that way. There’s also a certain quality backlash happening here, like the increased demand for vinyl records that has caught a lot of recording execs flatfooted-the assumption was that everyone was content with flat, tinny music they dialed up on their phone and that was that. I think there’s plenty of room for e-reading, and when I get back to paying taxes on my content, I won’t care how they read it, but you’re not going to make much sense out of Salman Rushdie by trying to make him part of your social media habit. Hence the stats and the NYT headline…….
I’ve steadfastly remained a believer in the printed page. I’ve never read a book on any type of e-reader, mobile device, etc. Just the ones I can hold in my hand and flip the pages. I’ve been so stubborn about this that I often send my own stories to actual magazines rather than e-magazines, though I know many of those pay better. When I saw that article, I was ecstatic!