Printed books are not dead

I get a bit exasperated by all the talk of the demise of the printed book.

It's easy to be pessimistic in light of the closure of independent bookstores, including Book Warehouse outlets, and the financial problems plaguing publishers such as Douglas & McIntyre.

But there's an article by Nicholas Carr in the Wall Street Journal that puts a more positive spin on the situation:

How attached are Americans to old-fashioned books? Just look at the results of a Pew Research Center survey released last month. The report showed that the percentage of adults who have read an e-book rose modestly over the past year, from 16% to 23%. But it also revealed that fully 89% of regular book readers said that they had read at least one printed book during the preceding 12 months. Only 30% reported reading even a single e-book in the past year.

What's more, the Association of American Publishers reported that the annual growth rate for e-book sales fell abruptly during 2012, to about 34%. That's still a healthy clip, but it is a sharp decline from the triple-digit growth rates of the preceding four years.