电子书崛起 传统书籍仍望逆袭

A few years back, technologists hailed the introduction of e-books as the beginning of the end for the printed page. Who could compete with electronic ink? Well, it turns out that real books are now making a comeback.

The appeal was clear With the purchase of an e-book reader, all the world's accumulated knowledge was there, ready at your fingertips. From 2010 to 2014 the US witnessed a surge in sales of the high-tech readers.

The closure of bookstore giant Borders in 2011-which had hundreds of stores across the U.S.-- also appeared to sound the death-knell for real books and physical stores.

But there's a new plot twist. It seems consumers crave the old-fashioned book-buying experience.

"Although I'm an IT techie, I still grew up with the love and feel of actually holding a book, highlighting it when you see those parts that make you think, wow that really touched me. Bookmarking those pages where you say, I'm going to go back and not forget where I left that mark at. With the electronic thing, because it's electronic online, there are just so many things that you can see, that you soon forget them. But when you make that hardcover book purchase and you see that in your library, every time you see it, you see memories, you see thoughts, you see ideas," said Wayne Manigo, book lover.

It turns out that US retailers are now turning the page on real book sales.

Since 2013 figures from the data firm Nielsen show a steady rise in the number of physical books sold each year from 501 million to 571 in 2015.

In the same time period, sales of e-book readers in the United States have fallen by about a third. Pablo Sierra senses this is the right time for him to take a risk-- opening up his own used book store in Washington DC.

"Over time I think people are starting to realize that they are missing something. Maybe they can't put their finger on it, but something is just not there anymore. Though I do think Amazon and Kindle have definitely changed the game, especially in economics where people do expect their pricing for books to be a little bit more affordable," he said.

Experienced book sellers such as Jon Purves at "Politics and Prose" say the decline and fall of real books has always been a tall tale peddled by the media.

"The commentators were saying, 'well one might have to win out over the other', and that commentary has sort of faded away now because what's happened is people have bought e-book readers and they've found maybe for them e-book readers are great for some types of books and some types of experiences, but other times they want physical books. what we're now seeing in terms of sales across the industry is that leveling off, so you have an established e-book market and a physical book market and they're existing side-by-side," said Jon Purves, deputy director of Marketing and Publicity of Politics and Prose.

Politics and Prose is content to sell digital readers and books together and will even merge the two establishing a modern version of the printing press right in the middle of the store which turns a digital copy into a real book at the touch of a button.