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by moolcool 1649 days ago
It's not like we're not culturally flirting with that already. Film photography and vinyl have both seen massive resurgences lately.
2 comments

"Massive" niche resurgences. Nothing remotely mainstream.
I'm gonna say vinyl is a bit more than mainstream. I can buy records at Walmart. That usually means a trend is widespread.
It's less niche than I would have guessed--about 5% of industry revenue and about the same as CDs (which surprised me a bit given that I still sometimes buy CDs and haven't bough vinyl for decades). Still, that's revenue not listens or anything like that so that's still pretty much a rounding error.
It is extremely niche because the relevant measure isn't revenue, it is "hours of music listened to". And the amount of hours spent listening to vinyl as a proportion of all music listened to is vanishingly small, smaller than it has ever been. A hipster resurgence as a novelty collectors item doesn't change that.
Wonder if the same will hold for books?
Ebooks never gained the completely dominant position that digital photography and music did. And even those among us who prefer ebooks for fiction consisting of flowing text still prefer printed books for a lot of more reference-oriented or "coffee table" books.
As someone who went all-in on ebooks for 10+Y, having bought a kindle immediately and used it extensively, I've gone back to books. The kindle experience just isn't as good and it took me a long time to simply accept that.
I like the Kindle especially for travel. Lighting in hotel rooms/planes often is less than ideal and it's great to not be forced to choose a book I'm going to be in the mood to read on a given trip. But, for the most part, I don't like cookbooks and other essentially reference books on Kindle/iPad. (I still buy them sometimes but mostly because I got some sort of $1/$2 deal.)
Yeah, kindle is only for travel and for when I'm living abroad in places where I just can't get access to non-mass market paperbacks and so need to order from the e-book store
What didn't you like about the kindle? I absolutely love mine, and almost dislike paper books in comparison.
Slow. So awful for going back and forth that I stopped doing it. Smaller display than I’d like. I have special hate for the touchscreen kindles, I really prefer my 1st hen kindle to the current version. Actual forward and backward buttons.