The Results Are In — A Survey of Book Purchasers

Posted by Joseph Esposito ⋅ Jan 16, 2013 - the scholarly kitchen

A Chinese abacus (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I recently mentioned on the Kitchen that I was participating in a survey on book discovery and purchasing. The results are in, and can be viewed over at the O’Reilly Tools of Change blog.

I contributed some thoughts on the results, mainly commenting on one item, the fact that print seems to play a larger role in the book business than many now believe and that bricks-and-mortar bookstores remain excellent venues for learning about new titles.

The problem we have now is that the new online venues have not yet made up for what we are losing as bookstore after bookstore closes down. When all of publishing becomes virtual, will the publications themselves be deemed to be less central to our lives?

Speculation on this topic is invited.