(opinion article)

On my mind, the problem of reading paper books from year to year is growing more and more. Plethora of people prefer posts online and sort fan-fictions rather than ‘dead-tree’ fiction or non-fiction. I think, that is the impact of the modern day.

For statistics in ‘Reading matters’ published by International Publishers Association and Norwegian Publishers Association, citizens of many countries prefer e-books or do not read books at all. Do not read books means less than 5 books per year. If we take the statistics from ‘Читомо,’ that is less than half of the citizens of Ukraine.

The main problem why people don’t read books is their average price in the market. In addition, of course, you can pay attention to the low quality of fiction or the lack of competent PR for high-quality. People who are part of the solvent stratum rarely pay attention to market novelties, most often reading classics from their home library.

The pricing policy of paper books in Ukraine is now such that teenagers or young adults, as more interested in reading, cannot always afford a Ukrainian high-quality publication. The problem here lies not in the price of the book, but in the average salary and the number of working hours.

Why, then, are e-books so popular now? The answer is simple – pirated copies. One of the largest channels in the Telegram is with pirated books, and the channels of the publishers have two or even three times fewer subscribers. In a country where a book costs more than a stick of sausage, people are used to saving money on them.

It is possible to increase the readability of paper books if we strengthen their advertising on the Internet, reaching Ukrainian-speaking users from all over the world who simply do not see on YouTube, for example, the content from Ukrainian bloggers. Also, by closing pirate sites, publishers will not lose profit and will be able to invest it in the development of sites, increasing advertising and improving typography.

Perhaps if the book becomes more accessible, people will not spend as much time blogging on the Internet. After all, people do not read, not because they do not like to read – sometimes they simply do not know where to get high-quality literature.

To RIF or stOOf is for you do decide…