Print’s charming: paper books are staging a comeback as e-book sales fall worldwide

THE printed word is making a comeback as paperback sales rise and e-books fall. But you’ll never guess who is behind the trend. Hint: it’s not the oldies.

Angie Simms, author of Eat, Drink and Be Straddie, in her Stradbroke Island kitchen with her book, to be released on October 16.

THE book is coming back.

After years of being chipped away by digital rivals, the printed word is growing in popularity while e-books sales fall worldwide.

And the readers behind the print comeback are not who you might expect — young audiences are turning their backs on tablet tomes.

Research from the Association of American Publishers found e-book sales dropped almost 25 per cent last year, with the biggest falls in children and young adult categories.

By comparison, paperback sales climbed by almost five per cent.

E-book sales also dropped in Britain for the first time in seven years and, though Nielsen BookScan does not track e-book sales in Australia, the company found printed book sales rose by $41 million.

Peter Hildick-Smith, founder of publishing research firm Codex Group, said younger readers were the biggest force behind the e-book slide as many were experiencing “digital fatigue” and a desire to spend time away from screens.

Almost 20 per cent of readers aged 18 to 24 reported buying fewer e-books now than when they launched, and their share of print book purchases was the highest of all age groups.

Readers aged 55 to 64 were buying the least printed books according to the survey, and a Kobo spokesman said it was a trend the e-book reader company had also noted.

“We have identified trends within the digital reading category, and we have found that older people specifically are making the move to e-reading formats,” he said.

The spokesman also warned sales figures included adult colouring books but excluded self-published digital titles.

Author Angie Simms, who will launch Eat, Drink and Be Straddie on October 16, said she would only release her cookbook in print as an electronic version would not do it justice.

While Ms Simms relied on technology to research its food and recipes, she said using screens in the kitchen was still far too tricky.

“Throughout this process we’ve often had the laptop or iPad on the kitchen bench while we’re testing recipes and it’s not ideal,” she said.

“It kept turning off and your hands are covered in stuff. Just having the cookbook there as a tactile item you can have in your hand is so much easier.”

Ms Simms said the book’s landscape photography would also be missed in an electronic version, and she and co-author Stuart Quinn were inspired by people who displayed cookbooks “in a stand as a piece of art … you can’t do that with electronics”.