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Digital Sales Down, Print Sales Up, The Paperback Is Powering Back Up

2380570441_985d9a2955_oIt was two years ago that a senior DC Comics executive sat me down at a New York diner and explained that digital comics had reached a plateau. That increasing sales would come from expanding into new physical territories like China. But not to expect digital sales to further encroach on print sales for a very long time.

Two years later, that analysis continues to hold up. Indeed digital sales are reversing. It's been called "screen fatigue". {eople are on their screens and phones all day and night – but reading a book is increasingly being seen as separate from that.

Brits in particular are abandoning books – with consumer sales down a fifth, reducing to 2011 levels, when the Kindle first launched in the UK. While print books have had a five-year high.

One analysis is that tablet and phablets have proved more popular, people don't want to take multiple digital devices round with them, but they make for worse book readers than, say, digital ink device like Kindles.

Purely on an anecdotal basis, I am seeing far fewer digital book readers on the Underground. And the paperback is definitely back. I am also given to understand they are far better for flirting – advertising your reading preferences, far harder to do with the back of a Nook.

And that includes comics…


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Rich JohnstonAbout Rich Johnston

Founder of Bleeding Cool. The longest-serving digital news reporter in the world, since 1992. Author of The Flying Friar, Holed Up, The Avengefuls, Doctor Who: Room With A Deja Vu, The Many Murders Of Miss Cranbourne, Chase Variant. Lives in South-West London, works from Blacks on Dean Street, shops at Piranha Comics. Father of two. Political cartoonist.
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