2015 Fifth International Conference on e-Learning
The Impact of E-Books on the Printed Books:
E-Books Popularity, Growth and Future
Zakaria Issa Saleh
Information Systems Department
University Of Bahrain
zsaleh@uob.edu.bh
Abstract— This study aims to identify the preferences of
the net generation readers in print and electronic media
activities and to investigate the impact of e-books on the
printed books, and try and see if printed books are
being gradually replaced by electronic one. The survey
method of research was applied to conduct the study
and questionnaire was used as a data collection tool.
The stratified random sampling technique was
employed for selection of participants. Comparing
readers’ preferences between reading a printed book
and electronic media, it seems that e-book Growth is
slowing, but still substantial, and the majority of book
readers believe that e-books will become more popular
than the printed books in the future
Keywords‐e-books; printed books; readers; student
preferences
I. INTRODUCTION
The Internet along with personal computers and
mobile e devices is fast transforming the world. The
impact of Information Superhighway on reading can
be felt in homes, schools, colleges, universities, with
information available with a click of a mouse. Using
internet for a source of reading provides larger
number of topics in a short time and the graphics and
animations could make reading material more
interesting for some readers than those traditional
printed books. Now a day, much more reading is
required than in the past, and reading is the most
important study tool next to the teachers, where the
book is usually the principal educating agency
contributing to learner’s success. Most people are
reading very differently today than they were few
years ago. While print may not be dead, people
worldwide are reading digital screens on a regular
basis. While this study is about e-books and printed
books, we found ourselves forced to talk about the
internet. The internet is the most formidable
challenge to the print media like print sources, print
reading and libraries [1].
E-books are published in different formats (e.g.
Acrobat adobe and Microsoft Word, Broadband e-
books, Compiled HTML, and other formats) and they
can be found as static or interactive, however this
978-1-4673-9431-4/15 $31.00 © 2015 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/ECONF.2015.58
Ahmad Shaher Mashhour
Information Systems Department
University Of Bahrain
amashhour@uob.edu.bh
study will be looking at e-books in general regales of
the formats or type. In addition, this research will not
attempt to produce a model to predict future use of e-
books or printed one. It is mainly a descriptive study
to present the current trends of reading.
A. Problem Statement
By investigating the impact of e-books on printed
books, there would be two fundamental issues that
can be addressed; the future of printed books and the
financial aspect of printed vs. digital. As for the
future of printed books, it’s worth investigating how
far e-books publishing would expand so that major
book dependents (e.g. education), and keepers (e.g.
libraries) can plan and prepare themselves
accordingly. As for financial aspect, while countries
like the United States for example, is seeing a slow
migration from print to digital, which means
publishers, may not jump from printed books to
digital formats completely, but they need to keep up
with the e-book growth as well as printed book
needs. However, if publishers increase the size of
their printed books, and overestimate the demand,
they face costly outcome where they have to take
back unsold printed books. In addition, if publishers
underestimate the customers’ needs and demands, the
customers may turn to the competition.
II. LITERATURE REVIEW
An electronic book (e-book) is a book published
in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both,
that can be read on computers or other electronic
device reader (e.g. a Kindle). While we could not
find when exactly the first e-book was published
however it is clear that e-books and e-readers have
made their mark on the publishing world. It seems
that since the e-book came along, reading on the go
has gotten even easier.
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Figure 1: Ratio of Digital Books Authors vs Printed [4]
Figure 2: Ratio of Authors Planning to Publish Digital Books [4]
Pew Research Center publication [3] indicated
that most adults read a book in the past year; print
remains most popular, but e-reading is on the rise,
and that most people who read e- books also read
print books. DCL and Bowker [4] in their 2014
digital publishing survey reported that more than
63% of the authors have published digital books and
more than 83% are planning to publish digital books
(see Figure 1 and Figure 2).
It is clear that there is a growing interest in
reading online; however, limited research has been
conducted to assess the changes to the people’s
reading behavior in the online environment (Liu,
2005). While some such as Coiro and Dobler [5]
have explored new literacy approaches, these
approaches have been targeted at young children
learning to read. Others [6] have explored the impact
of specific technological aspects such as text display.
There is also an indication that the Internet has an
impact on reading. It may be easy to claim that the
internet is a visual medium, that provides means for
the transmission of images, video, and music,
however, it's still largely a text-based medium. It
makes sense that a person's writing and reading skills
would be sharpened when more written material is
made available to the person in the form of online
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journals and newspapers. Searching through the
World Wide Web, and reading about e-books and
online publishing, most articles and nearly every
comment thread are filled with declarations that e-
book domination is already taking place.
It’s been several years since the first Kindle was
introduced, and today, about 15% of consumer
spending on books is electronic and about 30% of
books sold are e-books [2], and a survey published by
Pew Research Center in January 2014, which was
conducted just after the 2013 holiday gift-giving
season, produced evidence that e-book reading
devices are spreading through the population.
However, the same survey indicates that the majority
of book readers still only read in print, and overall,
50% of Americans now have a dedicated handheld
device–either a tablet computer like an iPad, or an e-
reader such as a Kindle or Nook–for reading e-
content [3]. So, it’s clear that e-books are here to
stay, but it’s less clear that the complete demolishing
of the publishing industry is around the corner. Hu
and Smith [13] use aggregate sales data from a
publisher who stopped releasing e-book version of
new published paper books for six months as a ab
experiment. They conclude that delaying the release
of e-books causes insignificant change in overall
hardcover sales but a significant decrease in e-book
sales and total sales.
While it may be important to understand the
distinction between the traditional static type of e-
books, which can be accessed online, printed or read
with an e-reader, versus digital apps with an
interactive user interface, however this research more
concerned with the future of printed books regardless
of which e-book type (static or digital apps) has a
higher impact on the readers’ selection. It is clear that
the invention of the tablet PC has created a new
medium for book publishing; an example of this
would be something appearing on an iPad.
To better answer the question of whether e-readers
are making books obsolete, we made a quick
comparison in terms of usability and practicality, and
we started by looking at what e-readers actually do.
In the year 2011, there were at least 10 different
models on the market, each with its own specific
features and capabilities. None was capable of
providing everything, and so choosing one over the
other depends on which of those capabilities are most
important to the reader.
Looking the advertised information about the
different models, we found that some e-readers are
devices dedicated to displaying digital books,
newspapers and magazines with no other extra
feathers (e.g. music or video players) . Some
dedicated e-readers offer Internet connectivity and
other high-end functionality, but their main purpose
is to display e-books. Other e-readers come equipped
with features like Wi-Fi, MP3 support and full-color
touch screens. They're a lot like laptop computers,
but smaller and a bit more portable. We chose not to
provide examples of any type because the issue is not
to present the best device or point out the worst; we
are only providing general information about what is
available for the readers.
Regardless of the type and features, we found that
e-book readers and software apps can require some
basic computer experience. Each e-book reader
works differently and must be installed and learned,
where books are very easy to use. Other advantage
that traditional printed books compare over this entire
device is the ability to read traditional book direct
sunlight. This is not an easy service that any of the e-
readers can provide (similar to using a smart phone
for reading a message when outside at high noon),
and while each e-reader has the ability to store
thousands of books in one easy-to-use device (which
makes them very convenient for readers specially
travelers and anyone who does a lot of reading on the
go, however, readers can break when dropped and as
result a total loss of all the books installed, where if
printed books are dropped, all the reader need is to
pick it up. Another risk of damage to e-books is that
these e-readers are handy for book worms, something
that printed books are not exposed to. In addition,
many e-books can be retrieved relatively quickly
compared to ordering books and waiting for them to
be shipped and delivered. Some e-book readers load
books and turn pages slowly, printed books are ready
the moment you pick them up, unlike many e-readers
or computers, real pages can be
flipped/skimmed/bookmarked fast, and the reader if
desired, can work easily with many books at once
III. STUDENT PREFERENCES FOR READING
The DCL and Bowker survey of 1,540
undergraduate college students found that students
overwhelmingly prefer print, at both four-year and
two-year institutions of higher education. The
reasons include students preferring “the look and feel
of print,” the greater ease in highlighting and note-
taking, and the fact that they can’t re-sell digital
textbooks [4]. Among those few students who prefer
digital textbooks, the reasons include price, ability to
search the text, and ease in carrying around the
survey says. According to a study by [7], students
are significantly more willing to adopt interactive
digital textbooks than their static digital counterparts.
Static digital information products represent only a
form factor change, not a content or usage change,
and thus do not offer the many cognitive/affective
benefits of interactivity [8].
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While university students operate in a world
immersed in digital text, they have not
simultaneously abandoned print. It seems that
students prefer to read on paper, although they also
want the convenience of online digital text. Liu [9]
has found that graduate academic library users like
the access provided by online electronic resources,
but prefer to print the electronic documents in order
to read them [10]. In a study of students at the
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
(UNAM), the majority of students preferred print,
and 63 percent reported that they could bear reading a
document on a computer screen for no more than one
hour [11].When it comes to course textbooks, a
marked student preference for paper over e–books
has recently been found [12].
IV. RESEARCH METHOD
The survey method of research was applied to
conduct the study and questionnaire was used as a
data collection tool. The stratified random sampling
technique was employed for selection of participants.
However, at this stage of the research, this research
we will not attempt to produce a model to predict
future use of e-books vs printed one. It is mainly a
descriptive study to present the current trends of
reading in terms of statistical values. To further get
views from the readers, we asked the participants to
add any comments regarding how the importance of
printed books, and we have presented some of the
comments in the conclusion section.
This study adopted the convenience sampling
approach to collect data. The method of collecting the
data for this study was mainly to distribute
questionnaires. The method was divided into two
portions. The first portion of the questionnaires was
distributed one of the major shopping malls in the
Chicago suburbs (USA), and the second portion of
the questionnaires was distributed in Chicago
downtown, with the assumption that participants
would be frequent commuters. A total of 314
questionnaires were returned. Excluding missing
answers and invalid questionnaire, 299 of 314
questionnaires are valid.
V. RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
1) E-book Growth Slowing but Still Substantial

Figure 3: Books Type Read by Participants in the Last Two Years
(2013 and 2014)
It seems that e-book growth is slowing in the last
two years. Figure 3 indicates that readers still prefer
to read printed books. The number of e-books readers
in all categories is less than the number of readers in
the printed books. In addition, the number of e-book
readers' decreases in year 2014 compared to 2013,
whereas readers of printed book increased in the
same period.
2) Printed Books are Preferred over E-Books
Figure 4: Participants Preferred Book Type
Looking at figure 4, it is remarkable to see that
preferring to go with a print book when reading is
overwhelming, where the number of readers who
prefer printed book almost three times as much as of
those who prefer e-book (72%). For those readers, we
wanted to find out why they like to keep reading the
printed books, and the big reasons for preferring print
are emotional connection to physical books, value for
money , comfort and convenience.
3) Commuting and Convenience are the Most Shared
Reasons for Reading E-Books
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Figure 5: The Participants Reason for Reading an E-Book
Figure 5 illustrates that the highest reasons of reading
e-books goes to commuting. More than one third of
participants (36%) are commuters who prefer e-
books. Those readers also indicated that they find it a
way of having complete privacy where the person
setting next to them is unable to know what they are
reading. Other reason like convenience and
readability (font size) what makes some readers
prefer reading e-books, where 25% of respondent
agree that e-book is convenient to them and 22%
think that font size control (readability) is important
to them. In addition, price has the lowest effect with
only 17% prefer to use e-book because of its lower
price compared to printed book.
4) E-Books Will not Become the First Option for
Many Readers in the Future
As it is illustrated in figure 6, the results of the
survey indicates that more than half of the readers
(54%) will not have an e-book as their first choice in
the future, and about one third of respondent (34%)
only intend to have an e-book as their first choice in
the future, with 12% are not decided.
Figure 6: E-books will become the first option for me in the future
5) E-Books Will Become More Popular Than the
Printed Books in the Future
Figure 7: E-books will become more popular than the printed
books in the future.
The more interesting finding that more than half
of the participants (60%) believe that e-book will
dominate the market in the future, with only 18% of
respondent disagree that e-book will be. This result is
somewhat puzzling, when another finding of the
research indicates that the majority of the participants
reported that e-books will not become the first option
for them in the future (see figure 6).
VI. CONCLUSION:
E-books will continue to grow, and continue to
exist, because it is becoming part of the growing
electronic world, and based on the data collected, it
appears that e-books are here to stay and the same is
true about paper books' future. The data also
provides a reason to be optimistic that e-books and
print books could both co-exist in the future together,
because even with all the features e-books can
provide over the printed books (convenience,
portability, and multimedia ) there are still some
fundamental qualities they will simply never replace
Some of the comments received by some of the
participants suggested that it would be a lot easier to
manage if books are downloaded to an iPad or
Kindle, at the same time other readers indicated that
digital books are somewhat hard for them to interact
with. Some other indicated that there's something
about printed books that they can't give up (e.g.
holding the book in their hands and physically
turning a page), which can't be matched with “pixels
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129
on a screen". The idea of e-books fully replacing
print books, for those who prefer their books printed
in ink on paper sounds saddening. Some participants
indicated that the internet has exposed them to so
many more books and resources that they can't read
fast enough to keep up, and for others while digital
books look like copies of paper, they can't be
designed or typeset in the same way as paper, and no
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know what I am reading”. And some even indicated
that a habit has already been formed. As for the
readers who did not read any e-book, some indicated
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indicated that the price of tablets is relatively
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of buying an e-book.
VII. FUTURE WORK
This is a starting phase of our study, which will
attempt to provide a model for predicting the future
of printed books/e-books that can be used for
estimating market demand of either type. The study
shed the light on the direction for future
investigation. This study identified few elements and
pointed several dimensions for future investigation to
determine and identify factor that would influence
reading an e-book vs a printed one. We can see a mix
of opinions that has to do with cost, availability,
ability to read outdoors, quality, sentimental values,
convenience, distractions, ease of use (or lack-of) ,
and a habit. The Future work could examine each of
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