Printed Book or E-book, Which is Better? An Investigation using Manga and Magazine

Abstract

The market of e-book has been growing fast and showing a great potential recently. However, the traditional printed books are still predominating the major market. Most people still prefer printed book despite e-book's advantages. In this study, we conducted an experiment involving 34 participants to determine the difference between e-book and printed book in terms of user experience. We hypothesized that different contents would influence the result, therefore we chose two different genres of books: magazine and the Japanese comic book - manga. Participants were asked to read on E-Reader and printed book, then asked to evaluate their experience using questionnaire. ANOVA, Wilcoxon signed-rank test, multiple regression analysis and principal component analysis were conducted to analyze the difference between each group and correlative factors that affected overall evaluation. The result indicated that printed books were rated higher than e-books, and manga was more applicable to e-book than magazine.