Skate to Where the Book is Going
Taking a page out of the great Wayne Gretzky’s book, we, as book publishers, shouldn’t be asking whether print or digital is the route… the question for us is if we’re going to skate to where the book is going or where it’s been?
There are a couple of interesting surveys that have come out recently, including Survey that Says Parents like Books Better and Survey Says Kids like e-Books Better.
If we look at what our parent’s didn’t approve of (rock and roll, dancing and now e-books), we have a pretty good indicator of what will eventually take over. When trying to predict the future we’ll do much better looking at where the kids are going:
- The average teenager sends more than 3,417 text messages per month (thats about seven messages per waking hour) and the average mobile user over the age of 65 sends 64 messages a month. Think text usage is going up or down?
- The average teenager uses almost 7x the amount of mobile data as the average 65yr old user. Think mobile data is going up or down?
- Users between age of 13 and 26 make up 72% of Facebooks users. Think social media will be a part of the future?
Now, keep in mind kids ages 4 and under have never lived in a pre-iPad/iPhone/Tablet/etc. world and that for them a book, TV and iPad are all equally familiar. Nostalgia for flipping pages is not in their vocabulary and to them, a magazine is an iPad that doesn’t work.
What do you think the future is going to look like? Which way are you going to skate?
Kids in Library image via Shutterstock.
