How do you like your read?

With The Girl from Simon's Bay newly out in a variety of formats, I've been looking at the way we read.
And it's fascinating because there have been some significant changes. After years of falling sales, print has picked up! Figures out recently show that for a second year in a row, the sale of paper books versus e-books has increased.

So, what's caused this change?
It may be that we're starting to find a balance between reading digitally and on paper. Interestingly, the increase in physical books sales is being driven by younger readers who seem to want to take a break from their hyper-connected lives and settle down with a book in their hands! There's also been strong growth in children's books and this has translated into more sales, too. After all, isn't a book made of paper a beautiful, tactile gift for a child?

Just to give you an idea of the numbers here: over 670 million print books were sold in the UK in 2016. We spent more last year on books across all formats than in the previous year. Physical bookshops, which have been under such pressure for so many years, also have reason for optimism because their sales rose, too.

So... digging deeper, what do the figures tell us about how are we reading these days?
It seems that when we have the choice, we like a physical book. But when we're on the go, we tend to read digitally. And our reading is no longer exclusively via e-reader devices. We're now embracing reading on our phones or tablets instead. And talking of phones, that's the way we're increasingly listening to books, too. Or via a CD set, like the ones in my picture, above. Who would have guessed? Listening to an entire book on your phone...

Perhaps the bigger issue, now, is less about formats and more about our lives.
As Frank Zappa memorably said:
So many books, so little time...