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A book in the hand beats two in the cloud

| May 3, 2018 1:00 AM

It turns out we left out one important item with last week’s poll of popular books.

A couple of readers mentioned it in passing, but Kay Kindig actually described the issue perfectly.

“I am enjoying reading about everyone’s favorite books,” Kay said of how we reported a lot of the preferences that came flooding in. “(But) I still prefer holding a real book, not my iPad or phone to read anything and everything.”

Well, Kay, honestly I thought perhaps I was an outlier in that category.

I have roughly a gazillion books in my Kindle cloud — more than I’ll ever read in a lifetime — and yet over the past year or two, I’ve found myself buying some actual paperbacks for late-night reading.

Truthfully, I felt a little stupid.

I mean, when you already own a boatload of books (many of which cost 99 cents, or even came free to Amazon Prime members), why would you possibly spend $7.99 or more for yet another title?

My only answer was that, just at that particular moment, I wanted the feel of an actual book in my hands.

When I read Ms. Kindig’s message, though, I began wondering if we might not be the only people experiencing Kindle fatigue.

And it turns out we’re in the majority.

In fact, all you need to know is that Amazon, king of the e-book, is now quickly building brick-and-mortar bookstores. There were 13 at the end of last year, with more planned to open soon.

Miriam Sontz, owner of Powell’s Books in Portland, summed up the reason perfectly.

“Something special occurs in physical bookstores that isn’t replicable online,” Sontz said.

She’s right, but …

Amazingly, the usually brilliant planners at Amazon were a little late. They didn’t open an actual bookstore until November of 2015, and it turns out that the e-book era likely peaked around 2011.

Get on the ball, gang.

Then there’s this: According to the Pew Research Center, 65 percent of Americans said they read an actual hold-in-your-hands book in 2017, while only 28 percent claimed they’d read an e-book.

If you can handle just a few more numbers, consider that in 2016 (the last year for which figures were available), sales of e-books in the United States were down 18.7 percent, while paperback sales were up 7.5 percent and hardback purchases jumped 4.1 percent.

DON’T GET me wrong here.

I still buy e-books, probably out of sheer laziness.

In fact, I just purchased another e-book mystery by Jo Nesbø, a Norwegian author who has become one of the hottest names in the genre (and I’m a huge fan of Scandinavian books and videos, in any case).

Guessing future business trends is not exactly my strength. I turned down a chance to buy 2.5 percent of a start-up outfit called Pizza Hut for $3,000 when I was a very young reporter — and being basically broke, I passed.

Needless to say, if I’d put up that three grand I’d now be working this job as a hobby.

Anyway, it turns out Amazon — for once — was as clueless as I’ve been about what the public wants to buy. So now they’re quickly throwing together bookstores where people can browse and maybe enjoy a couple hours lost in the stacks.

Technology isn’t everything.

Hey, I should troop down to The Well-Read Moose in Riverstone right now.

I may even run into Kay Kindig.

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Steve Cameron is a columnist for The Press. A Brand New Day appears each week from Wednesday through Saturday.

Email: scameron@cdapress.com.

Twitter: @BrandNewDayCDA