Readers committed to physical books can give a sigh of relief, as new figures reveal that e-book sales are falling while sales of paper books are growing - and the shift is being driven by younger generations.
实体书的死忠可以松一口气了,最新数据显示电子书的销售额正在下滑,而纸质书的销售额则在上升,而且这一转变是由年轻一代驱动的。
More than 360m books were sold in the UK in 2016 - a 2% jump in a year that saw UK consumers spend an extra 6% on books in print and e-book formats, according to findings by the industry research group Nielsen in its annual books and consumer survey.
行业研究公司尼尔森的年度图书与消费者调查发现,2016年,英国售出超过3.6亿本图书,同比增长2%;英国消费者在纸质书和电子书上的花费增加6%。
While sales through bookshops increased 7% in 2016, e-book sales declined by 4%.
2016年书店的销售额上涨7%,电子书的销售额却下降4%。
Nielsen's survey attributed the increase in print sales to children's fiction and to younger generations preferring physical books to e-readers.
尼尔森的调查将纸质书销售额的上涨归因于儿童小说以及比起电子阅读器更偏爱纸质书的年轻一代。
A 2013 survey by the youth research agency Voxburner found that 62% of 16- to 24-year-olds preferred print books to ebooks. The most popular reason given was: "I like to hold the product."
青年研究机构Voxburner2013年的一项调查发现,在16到24岁的年轻人中,有62%的人更爱读纸质书而非电子书。他们给出的最普遍的原因是:“我喜欢捧着书本的感觉。”
While Nielsen found that 50% of all fiction sales were in e-book format, only 4% of children's fiction was digital.
尼尔森发现,售出的所有小说中有50%是电子书,但售出的儿童小说中只有4%是电子书。
"We are seeing that books are a respite, particularly for young people who are so busy digitally," said Steve Bohme, research director at Nielsen Book Research UK.
尼尔森图书研究英国区研究室主任史蒂夫·伯梅表示:“我们发现书籍成了一种小憩的方式,特别是对那些终日埋头于电子产品的年轻人而言。”
The Nielsen survey contained another first: mobile phones and tablets overtook e-readers as the most common device used to read ebooks, with readers favouring multifunctional devices over dedicated e-reader brands such as Kindle and Nook.
尼尔森的调查还发现了另一个“第一”:手机和平板电脑首次超越电子阅读器,成为阅读电子书最常用的设备。比起Kindle和Nook等专用电子阅读器,读者更爱用多功能设备看书。