Author Stephen Hunt, webmaster of science-fiction website sfcrowsnest.com, has conducted a survey of 836 of his readers to find out how many of them are using e-books, and how they’re using e-books. Although the sample is small compared to the overall number of readers out there, and presumably at least a bit skewed toward the sort of people most likely to be early adopters, it provides some interesting numbers nonetheless.
71% of the people polled said that they currently read e-books. Of the 29% who did not, 69% (that is to say, 20% of the total respondents) said they would soon either be buying an e-reader or asking for one as a gift.
The Kindle was the frontrunner in terms of hardware used to read e-books, at 35%—but it tied with laptops at the same percentage, and the desktop was only slightly behind at 30%. (It was presumably a “choose all that apply” question, since counting the other devices the numbers add up to more than 100%.) Likewise, 39% of people read e-books using Kindle software.
Fully 54% of the readers bought books from the Kindle store. 39% bought direct from publisher, and 25% direct from author. Only 12% of those who replied buy books from iBooks.
It’s certainly heartening to see how readily readers are adopting e-books now. Hard to believe that just a few short years ago all we really had were eReader, Fictionwise, and Mobipocket, and the rise of e-books was consigned to the same brand of wistful futurism that said we should all be flying around in rocket packs by now.
(Found via FutureBook.)
