Words, Wonderful Words

Pre-COVID, I was worried. I thought it was all going to digital media. But since then, people have gone back to physical media - not just books but CDs (and vinyl!), DVDs/Blu-rays et al.

The reason is actually very simple: during COVID a lot of digital books were removed by Kindle, a lot of songs were removed by Spotify & Apple Music, and Netflix & Amazon+ culled their movie libraries. The reasons were to make space/room, that contracts expired, all sorts of things. But this left people who had bought these items suddenly out of luck. And, yes, removal is a possibility mentioned in the T&Cs. People realised that digital platforms take money and can take their media, and this saw a huge upturn in physical media forms.

I have 14 books digitally that I do not have a physical copy of, because they were only released digitally (8 are self-published works, 3 are ARCs), so if I lose them, I am not out that much. But my physical library has around 5000 books, around 15000 CDs LPs and cassettes, and around 400 DVDs. My son is now buying only physical as well (he's 19) and my daughter (16) buys books as real books, but still uses Spotify for music and Netflix and Stan for movies, etc..

As a writer, since 2022 the physical sales have outdone digital and audio combined, according to my publishers.

Hope that answers the question.