Book Buyers Cutting Back on Expensive Book Purchases
Bowker's Pubtrack Consumer service issued a report today about the effect of the recessison on book buyers. Consumers are reducing the number of books they buy. And when they do buy books, they are choosing less expensive books. Publisher's Weekly reports:
The PubTrack survey of book buyers found that 34% of Americans have reduced the number of books they are buying, while 19% of consumers are either buying more used books or swapping books with others. Other ways consumers are looking to save money when buying books include buying fewer hardcovers and more paperbacks, and only buying books that are being sold at steep discounts or that are on sale. And in a direct contrast to the hope that consumers might buy books as an inexpensive form of entertainment, only 2% of consumers said they are buying more books as an alternative to more expensive kinds of entertainment.
Library usage is also sharply up since the recession began. Unfortunately, budgets for libraries are down, so the librarians are really overworked these days.
