{"id":666,"date":"2015-02-02T15:15:18","date_gmt":"2015-02-02T07:15:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.haguepublishing.com\/?p=666"},"modified":"2015-02-02T15:15:18","modified_gmt":"2015-02-02T07:15:18","slug":"statistics-damn-statistics-and-wishful-thinking-the-not-death-of-the-ebook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/haguepublishing.com\/blog\/statistics-damn-statistics-and-wishful-thinking-the-not-death-of-the-ebook\/","title":{"rendered":"Statistics, damn statistics, and wishful thinking &#8211; the not-death of the ebook"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.haguepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/RIP-Kindle.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-667\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.haguepublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/RIP-Kindle.jpg\" alt=\"Picture of Kindle headstone\" width=\"242\" height=\"244\" srcset=\"https:\/\/haguepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/RIP-Kindle.jpg 242w, https:\/\/haguepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/RIP-Kindle-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 242px) 100vw, 242px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I have to admit to finding it a bit difficult to understand how an increase in eBook sales of 12.3% (from 2013 to 2014) is being peddled as signally the end of the ebook, particularly when sales of the physical book fell by 1.7% over the same period.<\/p>\n<p>Well, actually I can understand it &#8211; it&#8217;s called wishful thinking. What&#8217;s happening is that the rate of e-book growth has started to slow, and coupled with a slowing in decline of physical book sale the traditionalists are hoping it signals a return to the printed book. Just remember though, according to Nielsen Bookscan, we bought 237 million books back in 2008. In 2013, this had fallen to 184 million, a pretty drastic fall of 22 per cent!<\/p>\n<p>So yes, it appears the book market <strong>might<\/strong> be starting to reach some sort of equilibrium, with\u00a0about one in three books being a digital one, and the rest being physical books. And yes,\u00a0there is good news for booksellers with Waterstones reporting that\u00a0\u00a0sales of physical books has increased by 5 per cent during December, compared with the same month in 2013. A picture echoed by\u00a0Sam Husain, the chief executive of Foyles, who said sales at his chain of bookshops had jumped by 8.1 per cent, compared with December the year before.<\/p>\n<p>Bottom line, however, the eBook market continues to expand, and even if its growth slowed further to 9% it will only take five years before eBook sales constitute 50% of the total market.<\/p>\n<p>You can read the full article from the Telegraph <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/culture\/books\/booknews\/11335718\/The-Kindle-is-dead-the-book-is-back.-Or-is-it.html\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have to admit to finding it a bit difficult to understand how an increase in eBook sales of 12.3% (from 2013 to 2014) is being peddled as signally the end of the ebook, particularly when sales of the physical &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/haguepublishing.com\/blog\/statistics-damn-statistics-and-wishful-thinking-the-not-death-of-the-ebook\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5,12],"tags":[173,166,172],"class_list":["post-666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-publishing","category-ebook-readers-and-hardware","category-for-readers","tag-death-of-the-ebook","tag-statistics","tag-wishful-thinking"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/haguepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/haguepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/haguepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haguepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haguepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=666"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/haguepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":671,"href":"https:\/\/haguepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666\/revisions\/671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/haguepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haguepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haguepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}