alt Hacker NewsMissing from the article is the role of ebooks.
I hypothesize that the kind of reader who wants a physical copy of a book is much happier to get a hardcover. I know I’ve personally lever liked the cheap flimsiness of mass market paperbacks and I don’t read frequently enough for the higher price of a hardcover to matter.
The kind of person who wants the cheapest possible book moved from mass market paperbacks to e-readers.
There was a recent article probably posted here about how UHD 4K Blu-ray sales are increasing over time, somewhat counter to what the average person might assume. I think this analogy works reasonably well. The 4K UHD buyer fits a niche of someone who isn’t satisfied by streaming. They want a keepsake physical piece of media with beautiful box art and the highest quality picture and sound available.
In contrast, the kind of person who would have bought DVDs from the Walmart bin has almost certainly moved to digital. They never cared about the quality of the media, they just wanted a low price with a lot of convenience.
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Not just eBooks: the growing popularity of audiobooks has presumably had an effect on traditional book sales too.
Audiobook sales continue to grow strongly every year, where as ebooks have been flat or declining in recent years.
Add me to the chorus of "I like to have physical books but prefer paperbacks for practical reasons". The relative flimsiness of paperbacks doesn't matter much: I'm not abusing them, I'm not reading any given book that many times, they'll be fine. But hardback books are bigger and heavier than paperbacks.
If you buy a lot of your books second-hand and live in an expensive part of the world (as I do) then you will likely find that the cost of the books is less than the cost of the larger house you need to fit them in. So you want physically smaller editions of the books if possible.
There are exceptions, of course. Anything you frequently want to have open and flat in front of you -- e.g., cookery books -- you will prefer to be a nice hardback that you can do that with. "Coffee table" books whose whole purpose is to look nice need to be hardbacks (though I personally buy very few of those). Some books never get published in paperback editions.
Amazingly you can now stream 4K Blu-ray remuxes for a few bucks a month for a debrid service. But if there ever was a physical media I would buy it would be Blu rays.
I fit your hypothesis, with one proviso: even for books that I value enough to want a physical hardcover copy (for example, The Lord of the Rings), I also have an ebook version for convenience in reading. But for books that I would have just bought in mass market paperback years ago, yes, I just buy the ebook now.
I was thinking that too, but then the article mentioned at the very end that Canada isn’t experiencing the decline and its mass market paperbacks never ballooned in price. That one fact could prove the entire thesis of the article but wasn’t really explored.
> The kind of person who wants the cheapest possible book moved from mass market paperbacks to e-readers.
When I've looked at ebooks in the past they were usually more expensive than mass market paperback, most often on par with trade paperback. Has this changed?
There is a similar effect with DSLR cameras caused by the widespread availability of mobile phones with cameras included.
The “bottom end” of the camera market is basically gone now, but the high end full frame bodies are still selling.
Im my experience, people who read the most were the ones buying paperbacks for practical reasons. Hardcover was gift or for show, paperbavk for actual reading.
You yourself did not read that much by own words and was in harcover group for reasons that sound more aesthetic.
> I know I’ve personally lever liked the cheap flimsiness of mass market paperbacks
I'm in the opposite boat. Growing up, I mostly had paperbacks, and when I encountered hardcover, I just couldn't fathom why someone would pay so much more for something so obviously inferior. They're a bigger pain to hold. Not convenient to put in a backpack. Take up way more space on the bookshelf. Etc.