Book buying rebounds

The book industry has been going through some changes over the past number of years (duh!).

Physical books were 'declared dead' by some when the Kindle was introduced by Amazon, book stores struggled as the Internet- and streaming-age changed people's behaviour away from archaic printed word, towards more dopamine-pumping forms of media delivery.

But physical books have never gone away and now it seems that the industry is pricing in some optimism for the upcoming festive / holiday period.

One observation we made on a recent visit to Exclusive Books at the V&A Waterfront (yes, we're still very much a fan of a bookstore) the other day is that copies of books are literally piled high everywhere you look, but the selection of magazines (a category that used to occupy an entire wall of the incredibly deep store) is now at most a tiny section in one corner of the store.

Clearly the demand to read Gladwell's latests self-indulgent musings are higher than the general public's desire to follow the latest comings-and-goings of Helen Mirren.

Seeing this image above though - at least for us - begs the question...'what is going on in the magazine industry?'

As much as the Internet and websites full of information are great and all, nothing is as pleasing as lounging poolside on a steaming hot day while leisurely paging through a magazine. In our minds, magazines and the web are certainly not competing in the same category, so magazines still hold a very particular slab of value that not much else can be compared to.

The correction in the magazine category appears to have been overly aggressive, now leaving a clear vacuum for some innovation.

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