Printed book sales are falling in Russia as the e-book market grows, according to a Russian Book Chamber report last year, Vedomosti .
The number of books published in 2012 fell to 540.4 million copies, almost 12 percent less than the total from the previous year. In 2011, that figure declined 6 percent.
The number of titles printed last year fell 5 percent from the year before, from 122,915 titles to 116,888. Also, 2 percent of publishing houses closed.
But that trend does not mean a decrease in the number of people reading electronic books, Mikhail Seslavinsky, head of the Federal Agency for Mass Media, told Vedomosti.
A survey by the Romir research firm said about 65 percent of respondents buy fewer printed books compared with five years ago because they read e-books.
The survey, conducted in November, gathered opinions of about a thousand city residents in all of Russia’s federal districts, a Romir spokeswoman told the newspaper. The margin of error was about 3.5 percentage points.
The number of printed books has declined drastically since 2008, while the number of e-book readers has risen rapidly, according to data by the State Statistics Service, the SmartMarketing research group, Yevroset and the Russian Book Chamber.
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