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Do you prefer reading an e-book or a physical version? It might be a surprise, but for most people, old school print on paper still wins.

Publishers of books in all formats made almost $26 billion in revenue last year in the U.S., with print making up $22.6 billion and e-books taking $2.04 billion, according to the Association of American Publishers’ annual report 2019. Those figures include trade and educational books, as well as fiction.

While digital media has disrupted other industries such as news publishing and the music business, people still love to own physical books, according to Meryl Halls, managing director of the Booksellers’ Association in the U.K.

“I think the e-book bubble has burst somewhat, sales are flattening off, I think the physical object is very appealing. Publishers are producing incredibly gorgeous books, so the cover designs are often gorgeous, they’re beautiful objects,” she told CNBC.

People love to display what they’ve read, she added. “The book lover loves to have a record of what they’ve read, and it’s about signaling to the rest of the world. It’s about decorating your home, it’s about collecting, I guess, because people are completists aren’t they, they want to have that to indicate about themselves.”

Genres that do well in print include nature, cookery and children’s books, while people prefer to read crime, romantic novels and thrillers via e-reader, according to Nielsen Book International.

It’s more than a decade since Amazon launched the Kindle, and for Halls, there is also a hunger for information and a desire to escape the screen. “It’s partly the political landscape, people are looking for escape, but they are also looking for information. So, they are coming to print for a whole, quite a complex mess of reasons and I think … it’s harder to have an emotional relationship with what you’re reading if it’s on an e-reader.”

While millennials are sometimes blamed for killing industries, it’s actually younger people who appear to be popularizing print. Sixty-three percent of physical book sales in the U.K. are to people under the age of 44, while 52% of e-book sales are to those over 45, according to Nielsen.

It’s a similar picture in the U.S., where 75% of people aged 18 to 29 claimed to have read a physical book in 2017, higher than the average of 67%, according to Pew Research.

Not every author is a fan of e-books: “The Catcher in the Rye” author JD Salinger famously resisted digital media and information sharing online, but in August his estate agreed to publish his work as e-books for the first time. Salinger’s son Matt said a letter from a woman with a hand-related disability who found physical books hard to handle had convinced him to make his books available, according to a report in the Guardian.

As for the future of books, all formats will continue to be in demand, according to Jacks Thomas, director of The London Book Fair. “People always need knowledge and people always need stories, so from that point of view, the very core of the book industry I am sure is very strong. I’ll be really interested to see what the classroom of the future is because I think that will dictate a huge amount as to how future generations will engage with the written word … Or will it be the spoken word, but it will still be stories and it will still be knowledge, those aspects of books will still need to be curated. So, I think that the book, in whatever format, has a strong future,” she told CNBC.

Inflation growth slowed sharply in August to 1.7% after computer game prices dropped and clothing prices were slow to recover from the summer sales.

The Consumer Prices Index measure of inflation fell below 2.1% in July, according to the Office for National Statistics.

It is the lowest rate since late 2016.

As well as the falling cost of computer games, the ONS said clothing prices rose “less than last year after the end of the summer sales”.

Economists had expected inflation to dip to 1.9% in August.

The sharper fall sent the pound down 0.41% against the dollar to $1.2450.

The fall should benefit households, pushing wage growth further above the rate of inflation. Recent figures showed that pay, excluding bonuses, increased by 3.8% between May and July.

Why has inflation fallen?

The biggest drop in CPI inflation came from the “recreation and culture” sector, where prices fell by 5% in August, in particular in computer games and downloads.

The ONS said: “Price movements for games can often be relatively large, depending on the composition of bestseller charts.”

A hangover from retailers’ summer sales also weighed on clothing and footwear prices.

Although prices rose by 1.8%, it was below the 3.1% increase recorded last August.

Analysis

Andrew Verity, economics correspondent

While cheaper computer games contributed most to the slower rise in the cost of living, today’s inflation figures also give us a hint of price pressures coming down the pipeline – or rather, the lack of them.

The prices charged by food manufacturers to retailers, for example, are down. And prices paid by manufacturers for their raw materials dropped by 0.8% in the year to August.

Much of that was down to falling oil prices. As the global economic slowdown reduced demand around the world, the standard UK measure – the price of a barrel of crude from the North Sea oilfield of Brent – dropped by 19%.

The global slowdown, in other words, has removed much of the upward pressure on prices. On the financial markets, traders currently now anticipate no change to interest rates for at least a year, with the next move more likely to be down than up.

UK house prices rose at a slower rate in the year to July than at any time since September 2012, up by 0.7%, official figures show.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said there had been general slowdown in UK property price growth in the last three years.

This was driven by a slowing market in London and south-eastern England.

But the latest figures show the biggest drop in prices in the last year was in the North East of England.

Property values in the region fell by 2.9% in the year to July and were down by 2.1% in July compared with June, the data from the ONS and Land Registry shows.

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On an annual basis, there were also falls in house prices in the South East of England (down 2%), London (down 1.4%), and the East of England (down 0.5%).

Overall in the UK, the annual rise of 0.7% was the slowest since the 0.4% rise of September 2012. The biggest rise was in Wales, up 4.2%. The typical property in the UK is now valued at £233,000.

David Westgate, chief executive at Andrews Property Group, said: “July’s house price data is yet more evidence of a property market with a distinct lack of momentum.”

The ONS/Land Registry data is generally considered to be the most accurate house price estimate, although it covers a period which is slightly earlier than other surveys.

The Swiss National Bank made the following statement after its policy review on Thursday:The Swiss National Bank is keeping the SNB policy rate and interest on sight deposits at the SNB at −0.75%. It remains willing to intervene in the foreign exchange market as necessary, while taking the overall currency situation into consideration. Furthermore, the National Bank is adjusting the basis for calculating negative interest on sight deposits at the SNB.

A no-deal Brexit will slice almost 3% from Britain’s economic growth over the next three years compared with just 0.6% from the rest of the EU, according to the OECD’s latest health check of the global economy.

Amid concerns that all developed countries will experience slower growth next year, the Paris-based club for the world’s 35 richest states warned that the UK would take the biggest hit if the government failed to secure an agreement with the EU.

OECD analysis estimates that losing unfettered access to EU markets after 31 October will probably plunge the UK into a recession next year. The loss of trade, investment and technical knowledge plus a further fall in the pound will prolong Britain’s low rate of growth until at least 2022.

Laurence Boone, the OECD’s chief economist, said an agreement to smooth Britain’s exit was important to protect businesses and the economy. “The best thing is to avoid a no-deal Brexit and to stay closely aligned to the EU as possible,” she said.

Boone said she was concerned that after two years of heightened uncertainty created by tit-for-tat tariff wars and the Brexit negotiations, the depressed state of the global economy risked becoming permanent.

“The concern is that with high levels of uncertainty going on for so long that we run the risk of low levels of trade and investment becoming entrenched. And that would leave countries even more exposed to a financial shock,” she said.

Global investment fell to 1% in the second quarter of the year and world trade dropped from an annual rate of expansion of 6% in 2016 to 0.5%[check] in the second quarter.

Boone said the situation was likely to worsen next year if powerful trading countries, including the US and China, continued to expand the number of goods subject to higher import tariffs.

The OECD said it expected the UK’s rate of GDP growth to fall to 0.9% from 1%this year, down 0.2 percentage points from its May forecast.

But she said the UK would experience a contraction with knock-on effect to employment and investment in 2020 without a Brexit deal, though it was difficult to estimate the full extent of the shock without knowing how the Bank of England and the government would react.

Across the 19-member eurozone, growth will drop 0.1 percentage points to 1.1%. The US will continue to grow at the fastest rate among developed nations and stave off threats of an imminent recession, though GDP growth is expected to fall from 2.4% this year to 2% next year, the OECD said.

In May, the OECD said the global economy had stabilised after a difficult year marred by trade wars, volatile financial markets and rising oil prices. But the gloomier picture painted this week by the OECD reveals a global economy set on downward trend.

Boone urged developed countries to open their wallets to bolster infrastructure spending to stave off slowing growth and improve tax incentives for firms to expand and create jobs.

She praised the Dutch government for outlining a package of measures this week worth 1% of GDP that included extra cash for affordable housing, funds to support a range of infrastructure projects and plans to replace gas production with renewable energy.