Can Books Survive The Battle For Our Attention?
Technology is only becoming a bigger and bigger part of our lives. Magazines are struggling to survive. Could books be next?
In 2017, there are few things more valuable than our attention. Our attention is what makes businesses money; it’s what people, corporations, and everything in between vie for. Things from television shows to entire social media networks have died because they failed to capture our attention for a long enough time, and the things that haven’t died, we now consume differently. Could books be next?
The way we read books has already changed. Reading for pleasure is in decline across almost all demographics, and while physical books are still more popular than E-books, according to a 2016 Pew Research Center study, it’s not unreasonable to expect physical books to continue losing readers to e-books and audiobooks as technology becomes more and more pervasive.
The above-mentioned study also concludes that more people are reading on tablets and smartphones than dedicated e-book readers. This distinction between devices is subtle, but tremendously significant. Reading on a dedicated e-book reader entails a certain amount of focused attention, whereas reading on a tablet or smartphone is a constant battle against…
