Following World War 2, book publishers visited the famous product promoter Edward Bernays. How could he help them revive the war-torn book publishing business?
Bernays studied books and people. He discovered that books were found in libraries and that a primary motivation for visiting libraries was that it made people feel smarter.
So, Bernays visited major homebuilders such as Levitt and sons. He suggested that homebuilders add bookshelves to the new homes to make buyers feel smart and enhance their pride of home ownership. As new buyers moved into the Levittowns across the U.S., they saw the empty shelves and soon visited bookstores to fill the vacancies.
Edward Bernays came through for the (printed) book industry.
During the holiday season of 2009, Amazon (Kindle) and Sony (Sony Reader) promoted and sold a lot of eBook readers. Soon these companies were joined by Barnes & Noble (Nook), Apple (iPhone and iPad), and others. Many people received eBook readers for Christmas. People became aware of eBooks and sales of eBook soared following the two holiday seasons.
Online booksellers came through for the (electronic) book industry.
For example, following Christmas 2010, Knopf sold about 165,000 eBook versions of the Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson compared to 155,000 print copies. eBooks had reached the tipping point.
During the last nine weeks of 2010, Barnes & Noble store sales increased 8% while BarnesAndNoble.com sales were up 67 percent.
pBook (printed) sales are flat-to-declining due to the expense of paper making, printing, and trucking.
And, each day, there are fewer brick-and-mortar stores to display printed books.
eBook sales are increasing exponentially due to the growth in eReader ownership and lower cost of content.
Also, online stores have much lower rents compared with downtown stores.
Are people reading on Kindles, Nooks, and iPads smarter?
Or do they just feel they are?