Sign up for our daily briefing
Make your busy days simpler with Axios AM/PM. Catch up on what's new and why it matters in just 5 minutes.
Stay on top of the latest market trends
Subscribe to Axios Markets for the latest market trends and economic insights. Sign up for free.
Sports news worthy of your time
Binge on the stats and stories that drive the sports world with Axios Sports. Sign up for free.
Tech news worthy of your time
Get our smart take on technology from the Valley and D.C. with Axios Login. Sign up for free.
Get the inside stories
Get an insider's guide to the new White House with Axios Sneak Peek. Sign up for free.
Catch up on coronavirus stories and special reports, curated by Mike Allen everyday
Catch up on coronavirus stories and special reports, curated by Mike Allen everyday
Want a daily digest of the top Denver news?
Get a daily digest of the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Denver
Want a daily digest of the top Des Moines news?
Get a daily digest of the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Des Moines
Want a daily digest of the top Twin Cities news?
Get a daily digest of the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Twin Cities
Want a daily digest of the top Tampa Bay news?
Get a daily digest of the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Tampa Bay
Want a daily digest of the top Charlotte news?
Get a daily digest of the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Charlotte
Writing an ebook at a summer camp in Aurora, Colo. Photo: Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post/Getty
Books are up against the stiffest competition ever for our increasingly wandering eyes and shortening attention. Fortnite, Netflix, Facebook and a bottomless well of news make it hard to get through a chapter of a novel that once would have consumed an afternoon.
What's happening: Buoyed by the success of audiobooks, developers are deploying an array of new tech to pull words off the printed page and capture a generation hooked on whiz-bang entertainment.
Background: Less than one-fifth of Americans read for pleasure on any given day, according to 2018 numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
- That's down a whopping 30% from 2004, 3 years before the first iPhone and Kindle were sold. But the slide of reading time began back in the 1950s, as people began nestling into the couch with a TV remote rather than a novel.
- Why it matters: Experts say reading for pleasure is critical for children's cognitive development, and it helps adults improve empathy and communication.
New technologies like ebooks and audiobooks have helped boost reading as printed book sales slumped. But this has not offset what Steve Potash, CEO of digital book distributor OverDrive, calls an "epidemic of decline in reading books."
- His vision of the future of reading: Books that follow you from your bedside to your smart fridge to your car, and everywhere else.
- "Anything you put into your future home, you can be reading or listening with it," Potash tells Axios.
Interactivity is the key to pulling people back into reading — especially for younger audiences, Potash says.
- Already, some kid-friendly ebooks are accompanied by immersive narration that sounds more like a movie soundtrack — complete with sound effects — than a traditional audiobook.
- Children can follow along with passages highlighted onscreen as the narrator reads them aloud. They can also slow down the narration, a useful option for readers learning a new language or who have difficulty keeping up.
- Game-like apps for the classroom, like OverDrive's Sora, give students badges for finishing assigned readings and reward them for looking up words and taking notes.
What's next, according to Potash:
- "Virtual reality and augmented reality are going to expose reading to an audience that's used to bright, shiny things," Potash says.
- With augmented reality, you can look through a smartphone or tablet screen at a book and watch as a 3D world sprouts from the pages.