Imagine for one second that it was ebook sales that had precipitously dropped 20% in the past week and was down almost 8% so far this year.


Yes, this post was first written on April 1, but no, this is not an April 1st joke, just a brief study in the juggling act that is industry reportage on print and digital publishing news.

Publishers Weekly (PW) reports that US print sales dropped almost 20% this past week.

Imagine for one second that it was ebook sales that had precipitously dropped 20% in the past week and was down almost 8% so far this year.

The industry pundits would be reeling out the “experts” and “spokesmen” patiently waiting for their next opportunity to explain how screen fatigue, the desperate desire to visit a bookstore, the sheer pleasure of holding a book in one’s hand, and how readers hanker for the feel and smell of the printed book were driving digital publishing into oblivion.

But this is print, and the panic days of the early 2010s when much of the industry really did fear for the future of the print format, are behind us.

But make no mistake, print sales are falling.

Last week PW reported print sales down -12.8%.

The previous week? Try -8.3%.

The week before that? How does -16.2% grab you?

We have to head back to mid February to see PW run anything about print sales rising, and that only by +4.3%.

But no, the sky is not falling, readers are not losing interest in print and print fatigue is as much a figment of the industry’s imagination as screen fatigue.

There are many reasons to be concerned about the direction the industry is heading, but “falling” print sales is not one of them – at least not at this time.

This post first appeared in the TNPS newsletter The View From The Beach on LinkedIn Pulse.