This past week, Oxford University's (Oxford, U.K.) press blog described how the coming of the Amazon Kindle – with inexpensive eBooks to read on it – launched a sales tsunami that shook up the publishing world. During the next five years, triple-digit growth for electronic books was to become the new normal, driven both by the enticement of novelty and a cluster of mega-sellers such as Fifty Shades of Grey, Hunger Games, and Divergent. Figures for print paled in comparison.

But then the wave crested. For the first half of 2013, sales of children’s and young adult eBooks plunged 46% from the previous year-to-date. The Association of American Publishers reported that by year’s end, overall eBook sales for 2013 had risen only 3.8%.

 

More information about the staying power of print on paper can be found in the full article available online.