From a MocoNews Article by Laura Hazard Owen:
Last year was widely perceived to be a year of outrageous e-book growth, but some new research suggests otherwise. According to new data from Bowker and the Book Industry Study Group, the number of book buyers who also purchased an e-book increased by 17 percent in 2011, compared to 9 percent in 2010 – well below the 25 to 30 percent growth that some had hoped for.
E-books now make up 26 percent of adult fiction purchases, compared to 11 percent of children’s book purchases and 3 percent of cookbook purchases.
Seventy-four percent of book buyers have never bought an e-book (and 14 percent of those actually own an e-reader or tablet but choose not to use it to read e-books).
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[Via INFOdocket]
Is this supposed to be a surprise?
We all knew that ebooks draw upon heavy readers a ot more than casual readers.
Buying an ebook reader is hardly a good investment if you only read one or two books a year.
Conversely, we’ve long known that the bulk of the monster bestseller volume goes to those same casual readers who aren’t bookstore regulars. That is why pharmacies, supermarkets, and department stores are eating away at the bookstore chains.
And of course, not everybody that buys a tablet buys it to read; the things are primarily web-surfing and media consumption devices, ater all.
Still, maybe putting numbers to the obvious will get the attention of the traditional publishers.
Industry insiders never seem to grasp that this is a very new market and only new adopters have entered the market at all. The market is in it’s infancy. They get caught up in the excitement and tech gadgets and think everyone is doing it. They’re not. Not yet.
Correct. The current market (in the US, at least) has gone beyond hobbyists and techies to heavy readers, but casual readers have little reason to jump in beyond hype and, maybe, a desire to read more…at some point.
Most casual readers are casual readers for a reason: lack of time, lack of funding (low-end ereaders could help a bit there), or most common; lack of interest.
More, the casual readers may *never* jump in.
Not with current tech and product configurations.
There are a lot of reading applications that neither 6in eink nor LCD tablets can properly address.
It’s just a matter of time. I once laughed that the vehicle can move without a horse. Can anyone today imagine life without a car?
This comes as no surprise to me. I know a lot of ereader owners who buy the easy read cheap books in electronic form but choose hard bound for books they want to keep. Most tablet owners I know do not read on them; they play games and surf the Internet.