Book News from Sheppard's Confidential

from issues 260 & 261
http://www.sheppardsconfidential.com/

UK: E-reader ownership rises - readers of printed books decline
A new survey has revealed that a third of Brits now own an e-book reader, a figure that has risen by 21 per cent compared to 2011.
  By comparison, reading printed books as an activity has fallen by 4 per cent according to the digital entertainment survey commissioned by Wiggin, although it still rides high as an activity engaged in by 43 per cent of the survey's respondents.
  Add to that the fact that 38 per cent of people still have no plans to start reading e-books, and print might not be quite as dead in the water as people seem to think. The stats come by way of the 2012 Digital Entertainment Survey from Entertainment Media Research and media law firm Wiggin, which surveyed 2,500 British people aged between 15 and 64 in March this year. Read more
_________________

This week's limerick:

A landlord was the bookman from Kent
He sometimes sold books but he lent
Quite a lot to his good tenant, Joe
Who decided to sell them, so
He was able to pay the due rent 

Contributed by David Kelly, Carvid Books, Cranbrook, Kent UK.
_________________


It may be too soon to gloat over the fall of e-reader sales but as we have all witnessed over the past three decades, both hardware and software soon become obsolete. Remember DOS, laser discs, acoustic couplers for exchange of data via the telephone, and ISDN lines?  And more recently, the programmes that only operate on Windows XP?  Now it appears that 'tablets' are taking over from e-readers as a first choice for reading books.  Maybe it's a generalisation but the pace of progress and advancing technology will cost the owners of e-readers more than if they had stuck with printed books!

__________________


USA: Target takes a stand against Amazon over 'showrooming'
The New York Times headline says it all: 'Target, Unhappy With Being an Amazon Showroom, Will Stop Selling Kindles.' The story beneath that headline reports that Target - with 1800 stores, 'one of the bigger carriers of Kindles in the offline world' - was 'signaling its growing irritation with its rival Amazon'.
  Like other big retailers, Target has been trying to figure out how to stop Amazon shoppers from visiting Target stores to check out products, and then buy them online from Amazon. It is a practice encouraged by Amazon; over the Christmas holiday, for example, the company offered a promotion on its Price Check app that gave shoppers 5 percent off any item scanned at a store. Read more

UK: Is it too soon to cry 'the e-reader is dead'!
As consumers increasingly choose tablet computers over e-readers for e-book reading, the e-book business will be adversely affected, according to a new survey.
  Over the course of the past six months, consumers' preference for dedicated e-readers as a 'first choice' reading device declined from 72 per cent to 58%, according to the second installment of the Book Industry Study Group's Consumer Attitudes Toward E-Book Reading survey. At the same time, 24% of e-book buyers prefer to read on tablet devices, up from less than 13% in August 2011 when the first installment of the survey was conducted. Read more

International: Will e-books be obsolete within five years?
Crippled by territorial license restrictions, digital rights management, and single-purpose devices and file formats that are simultaneously immature and already obsolescent, they are at a hopeless competitive disadvantage compared to full-fledged websites and even the humble PDF. Read more
___________________

D&M Packaging has announced a new product, an ink eraser that removes inscriptions and library stamps. The Ink Eraser is a gum based eraser with silica grit added which if used very gently can remove inscriptions, light foxing and other marks from paper surfaces. It works by removing the outer surface of paper taking the ink with it and leaving minimal abrasion to the paper surface. More information, prices (single and discount for bulk), on-line ordering can be found on the company's website
___________________