No one buys books, cd's, dvd's, blurays, magazines, comics, games, and many other things that were bought a lot 10-30 years ago. These days everything is online and (usually) subscription based.
Looking at myself, the only things I buy regularly, is food ;)
n = 1, but I purchase physical books, comics, references, etc. under two circumstances:
- cannot find an easy way to de-DRM media available on online stores. I want the ability to copy epub files across my devices and read offline.
- the digital version is a poor-quality scan. This frequently happens with comics.
This is embarrassing to discuss normally, but an additional perk of physical comics and light novels is that I can look at the obi and get reminded what I was doing in the past, where I was in the past, what was happening in the past, etc. especially for those which I have finished reading. The subset of my friends with similar interests as me tend to discard the obi, since it becomes bothersome while reading. I have the habit of removing the obi while I am reading something, then add it back when finished reading the entire thing. Things like this can't really be done with digital media, especially subscriptions.
Surely CDs have become Spotify, tidal. Blu rays have become Netflix, Disney, etc. magazines have become websites, etc.
The content is still there just the medium has changed. Has the same been true for books though? eBooks do exist of course, but did they replace the publishing industry that existed 50 or a hundred years ago?
It seems obvious that books lost some market share.
People have a limited amount of time for entertainment and have a lot more choice between Netflix, YouTube, Books and thousands of other things than they did back then.
True for fiction books. But if you think about fiction generally, as the poster said, the medium has changed. People still love fiction, but now it's movies and shows.
As far as I can tell eBooks aren't significantly more popular than physical books. Surely the publishers cited in the article wouldn't have neglected that topic if it was actually a major revenue stream.
As far as audiobooks go I don't know. Do you have any numbers?
Looking at myself, the only things I buy regularly, is food ;)