SHOCKER! Ricoh Americas Corporation – a company that specializes in production print equipment – commissioned a ‘study’ that discovered that people like print books. It would have been news, probably, if the study discovered that consumers preferred anything else.
The study was interesting in it’s scope. It says that 60% of ebooks downloaded are never read (no mention of how many dead-tree books purchased are never read), that consumers “have an emotional and visceral/sensory attachment to printed books, potentially elevating them to a luxury item,” and that “college students prefer printed textbooks to eBooks as they help students to concentrate on the subject matter at hand” because, y’know, you can’t study using a tablet that has an internet connection that could allow them instant access to more – and focused – information about what they’re studying.