E-book sales have been on the decline in recent years. After peaking in 2013 at $3.24 billion, revenue from e-books dropped to $3.2 billion in 2014 and then dipped to $2.84 billion in 2015, according to AAP.
Why are e-book sales dropping, while print sales remain fairly steady? Fortune breaks it down. Check it out:
Consumers likely don’t see the same value in e-books from big publishers that they did in earlier years. A typical e-book best seller now costs $14 or $15 versus the $9.99 price point that Amazon 1.23% featured in the first few years after it introduced its Kindle e-reader. The increase shrunk the discount between hardcovers and e-books, which can’t be lent or resold like a print copy. On older books, some e-books carry higher prices than the same title in paperback.