When the likes of Amazon Kindle and Sony E-Ink tablets hit the stores, physical book and journal publishers were staring at a dark tunnel. Writings (no pun intended) were on the wall for the possible demise of bookstores and sales of books.
However things are not usually as predicted, in Britain the sales of e-books are seeing a decline with readers suffering from “screen fatigue” and are opting back for physical feel. The publishing industry has had a record breaking year in 2016 recording their fastest year on year growth in decades while e-book sales has been seeing a declining trend since 2015 which impacted mostly the fiction, non-fiction and children’s titles. The notion is that people are having a sense of screen fatigue from using so many devices in their daily life and want to shut-off with a book and coffee.
Traditional authors like JK Rowling insists on paperback for her book and not much of a fan of electronic version. With the return of bookshops in town centres (even Amazon has opened a bookstore) topped with striking front covers were cited as reasons behind the jump in physical sales. Here in Malaysia digital books never did see much interest, that’s probably why eReaders never came to this country. Besides we are not known to splurge on books or reading materials and its easy to see why, as we are not known to be on the global list as avid readers.
But magazines still spur interest with readers in the country, we here at PC.com still believe print will never be replaced by other platforms including the increasing free online news content. Readers looking for credible and trusted news can always rely on the established news formats. Even though having an online portal and e-edition with strong following, there is still huge segment of the population who continue to buy our physical magazine. Maybe because of the tactile feel, flipping of the pages, portable and does not require charging, colour images that does effect your eyes or the fact that we reserve the best content for our print edition.
