I am 2x founder working on the next problem that I am looking to solve.
My hypothesis is that we are seeing a strong decline in number of people who read books. There are various readons behind it. I am listing them one by one
Stuffed Bookshelf: Lot of people who loved to read buy a book, but end up stuffing them in bookshelf. Once the bookshelf is fully stuffed they are not anle to buy more, hence they stop reading.
Sharing of book leads to losing ownership: For many people who have lot of books, when share their books with friends/family/colleagues the chances of them getting the book back is tends to 0
Experience across reading is broken: when reading from paperback, they are not able to make notes, highlight paras and reloook at them later woth context, not able to track bookmarks etc
Because of discontinuity across all the medium of book reading user shift from one medium to another, but is not able to stick to one medium for long.
I would love to hear thoughts from people of community and understand why are you not reading books? What according to you is challenge ?
TIA!
All those who share their inputs will get a month subscription free of my book subscription app!
@Builderboy how about a gen AI image tool. Which acts like a companion to reading (or listening)
Basically creates images of the scenery, characters etc on your phone as you listen.
Would love this. Being able to see images visualising what Im reading would be an A++ experience
Was an avid reader. Have now switched to audible though (easier to listen while doing chores/commuting , cheaper, easier access any time)
+1 to this. I used to buy physical books all the time. I've cut back on this in a major way. I also don't tend to read most of the books I buy. But on audible, I've managed to finish most of the books I've purchased so far.
I'm not an avid reader, use audible while walking or doing some normal tasks. Physical books are too much commitment form avg user's end.
From first principle perspective, given choice which medium you will use?
Assumption is all other factors are same for all three medium.
For non factual books I'll prefer audio books format, but if the book has lots of data points then digital text only can understand,
I've enjoyed no rules rules on audible but couldn't make sense of Arun Kumar Black money book in audio it probably had many graphs and tables.
id 100% use this. i’m a reader across hard copies, e-books and digital publications.
my biggest struggle is consistency and retention. retention is partly solved through Reader by Readwise, that helps with annotations and is linked to my second brain, but consistency remains unsolved. this is partly due to decision paralysis of “what to read”, given that there are so many unread books i have as well as unread articles on Reader/Matter
@Builderboy I feel the consumption is still the same. Formats have changed. For example I used to read lots of books during college time. Rn I focus on podcasts, as I want to focus on particular area of interest. Read a lot more on substack, medium.
Now books need to compete against YT Shorts/Reels & Twitter.
I am an avid reader and moved to kindle. Now I need to fight against social media and mobile to get time for kindle.
I'm more interested in knowing what your earlier 2 ventures were.
I just pirate books and read on my tablet so most of your hypothesis are kinda invalid and most people I know don't have the time to read a book and when they do they rather watch Netflix or go outside
I have a gargantuan amount of books but have read less than 1% of them
I dont like to read long format but likes if any application who can give pointers. I rather fine video formats better suited then reading it.
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