6 September 2019

The resurgence of print books

The Next Chapter

After years of losing attention to the ebook, the sales of print books are back on the rise, a trend that brings with it greater understanding, child development and pure enjoyment of reading.

A question: what type of book has experienced the biggest rise in sales in the past year? Psychological thrillers? TV tie-ins? Educational text books? All remain popular, but one of the fastestgrowing areas of publishing is self-help books. Blame politics, blame the uncertain times, but the sales of self-help books have rocketed by 20% in the past year.

This increase in sales is reflected right across the book industry, with many genres reporting greater popularity across most platforms. But while the past five years has been dominated by the rise of ebooks and the fall of print, in 2018 the trend was reversed, with the UK's print book market growing by 2.1%. According to Nielsen BookScan, a total of 190.9 million books were sold at a value of £1.63bn, an increase of £34m.

"The demand for physical books is back," says Stephen Clarke, Chief Executive of high street retailer WH Smith. "The physical books market is in much better health than the ebooks market and we see that continuing."

A global success story

The resurgence of print books isn't just confined to the UK. Their success is repeated in countries such as Italy, where print book sales were up by 1% in 2017, and the US, where print books sales volume grew 1.3% in the past year, with titles such as Michelle Obama's Becoming selling over three million copies.

The UK is also the world's top book exporter, with sales of physical books to Europe increasing by 13% to £498m in 2017, and to East and South Asia by 8% to £248m.

But while print books are back on the rise, the sales of ebooks have plummeted. In Germany,ebook sales only account for 4.6% of the entire book market, while consumer ebook sales in the UK fell by 17% in 2016 from a high in 2014.

There are a number of reasons that can account for such a fall, such as the increase in price of the average ebook and the actual ereaders themselves. But one of the main factors is ‘screen fatigue', where people are looking at physical books to provide a break from the many digital screens they look at during the day. Research by Two Sides found that 62% of UK consumers prefer to read books in print.

"You have a very personal and immersive relationship with a print book," explains Paul Opie, Managing Director of Latimer Trend, a company with over 130 years of printing history. "There's a whole journey involved in buying and reading a physical book that makes the experience more enjoyable. There's also the ability to share either a particular passage or the entire book with someone else, which you don't get with the electronic version."

The influence of technology

Based in Plymouth in the UK, Latimer Trend has seen a significant uplift in demand for print books. With book production representing 70-80% of their turnover and academic journals representing 15-20%, they are ideally placed to gauge the popularity of print books, both in the trade and educational areas of publishing.

"While the overall popularity of print books has gone up by a couple of per cent, for us as a business it's increased more dramatically," says Paul. "In recent years we have seen a lot more book orders, which has a lot to do with an investment in printing technologies. That makes publishing and printing books more accessible to more publishers, because it's more cost-effective at much shorter print runs."

This access to more cost-efficient printing is certainly a factor in greater print volumes, but so are the proven benefits of reading and learning from print books. A recent study by the University of Michigan found that parents and children interact more when reading a print book than an electronic book. Those interactions are vital to promoting healthy child development and create positive associations with reading that will stay with the child as they get older.

"Shared reading promotes children's language development, literacy and bonding with parents," said the lead author of the report, Dr Tiffany Munzer. "Parent-led conversations are especially important for toddlers because they learn and retain new information better from in-person interactions than from digital media."

A physical connection

Another indication of the new appreciation of print books can be found in a recent survey  from Stora Enso, which concludes that "printed books will continue to be important, relevant and interesting, and still very much appreciated compared to ebooks and audiobooks."

"One of the main findings was that there is a positive future for printed books," says Essi Lauri, VP, Head of Segment Newsprint & Book, in Stora Enso's Paper division. "Holding a physical book gives you a different feeling than holding an ebook. It's an experience."

Print gives the reader a physical connection to the book, a welcome combination of touch, sight and engagement that allows you to switch off from the normal world and lose yourself in a great story. In a world dominated by digital media that has a tendency to carry content that's more negative than positive, they provide a refreshing sense of control and a deep emotional connection.

"We tend to punish the print book because it's been around a long time," says Paul Opie of Latimer Trend. "But it's a format that we've honed and matured to the point where it always >works. It's the only format that stimulates most of our senses at the same time, which is why we  return to it over and over again."

The sales of self-help books may be booming at the moment, but with their ability to allow the reader to switch off, absorb information, and truly enjoy the experience of reading, it seems that all print books are self-help books.

Source: Published in The Page, May 2019, Issue 10 and reproduced with kind permission from Two Sides.