1. While it's long been predicted that ebooks will replace physical books, recent figures show ebook sales are down and physical books are up. In terms of value, physical book sales have never been higher. Ebooks now look more like a fad and/or a niche interest than a wholesale disruption of the book market.
Yes, ebooks were a fad and, like me, people have learned to hate them and go back to books. However, books peaked in 2007 and despite a slight increase over the last couple of years, books are not back up where they were. They may never go back. And a huge part of the bump up is adult and children's coloring books and other children's books. Print is very expensive- the internet and cost have severely hurt MAGAZINES and books may go back to decline in the future when prices continue up for ink and paper and printing vs. posting electronically. And people are reading books and mags less and less because they need to go on social media and email.
2. It's true that many bookshops have closed down. The reason for this is that people are buying their books online not at local bookshops. And they are buying tons of books online.
Yes, that is true. But think about it. Borders and Barnes & Noble sold Kindles and Nooks and hurt themselves because their own customers got ebooks, many from Amazon. Now, people like me love physical books, but we find them on the electronic media where we continue to see the price of the books vs. the price of the ebooks. Eventually, ebooks will win.
3. The reason newspapers are in decline is because the Internet provides instantaneous news these days. This is a challenge for newspapers in particular, not for printed media in general. Most (or all) books and magazines contain information with a much longer shelf life than a daily newspaper. So they are simply not as vulnerable to decline in the face of the Internet as newspapers are. It's the immediacy of news that makes newspapers vulnerable to online alternatives rather than the printed page being out of date.
Mostly true. Magazines continue to decline. Newspapers are actually faring better. Most people who have abandoned newspapers already have, so they hold their own until their customers pass away.
4. It's true that DVDs and CDs and various other media technology have become pretty obsolete. But there are advantages to the physical book that still make it an attractive option compared with alternatives, and in ways that simply don't apply to other forms of media. Plus it's worth remembering that books have been around 2000 years whereas DVDs and what else have only been around a few decades at most.
Yes. I can leave a book on my beach chair and go snorkeling. I don't have to worry about a battery. Books may survive yet, but I doubt it. Paper and print will die out, hopefully not in our lifetimes. Just as you say about Watchtower, "Publishing printed material of any quality or quantity is simply a luxury the WT can no longer afford," it will become true for all printed materials some time in the future.
On the subject at hand, yes- Watchtower is not gaining money in leaps and bounds from print. But I highly doubt they were losing money from print in the 1990's or even still today. They just weren't making enough money on print to cover the losses in other areas.
Even my mother, a JW who months ago said she didn't want a tablet, just got a tablet. So JW's are late arrivals to the "fad" of ebooks, and will hate it, but will have no choice but to say they love it. The tablets will be loaded with video and will cause JW's to read less. The less they read, possibly the less they are repeatedly indoctrinated by JW doctrines. Video on the tiny screen just won't have the same effect, so they may go the way of Borders Bookstores, but it's a much slower decline.
