E-reader owners still buying as many print books

[GA Russell]

Maggie, since your comments do not describe my actions or my attitudes, why did you quote my post?

[OtterBooks]

How many of us have spent $10 to see a movie and then felt as if someone literally just stole two hours of our life? I mean where you honestly would have felt less cheated had you bought the ticket and thrown it away, and would even consider paying a buck or two more to have the memory wiped from your brain. The fact that it cost $100 million to make the movie was of no consolation.

That seldom happens with a book, at least for me. It's not because there aren't terrible books, but because I have better opportunities to determine quality beforehand, at least to a far greater extent. There's books by authors I know are going to provide hours of entertainment, not to mention a level of emotional and intellectual fulfillment. That experience is not diminished by the price:material cost ratio, nor is it a factor when buying it (unless it's outrageous which rarely is the case). It's tough to put a price on these things.

[Maggie Leung]

Originally Posted by GA Russell

Maggie, since your comments do not describe my actions or my attitudes, why did you quote my post?

Because you posted about "avid readers" vs. "avid buyers." Publishers care about buyers, not readers who don't buy or who will buy only at low, low cost. They do such surveys to figure out how trends will affect their bottom lines, not to check whether the public at large is reading.

[GA Russell]

Originally Posted by Maggie Leung

Because you posted about "avid readers" vs. "avid buyers." Publishers care about buyers, not readers who don't buy or who will buy only at low, low cost. They do such surveys to figure out how trends will affect their bottom lines, not to check whether the public at large is reading.

Right. So they are misrepresenting the group. Their generalizations are about their customers, not about the avid readers of America.

[Maggie Leung]

Originally Posted by GA Russell

Right. So they are misrepresenting the group. Their generalizations are about their customers, not about the avid readers of America.

I doubt they care to misrepresent; I think they're looking at readers as a business, which they are for publishers.

[Barcey]

Originally Posted by Maggie Leung

Because you posted about "avid readers" vs. "avid buyers." Publishers care about buyers, not readers who don't buy or who will buy only at low, low cost. They do such surveys to figure out how trends will affect their bottom lines, not to check whether the public at large is reading.

A business needs to understand their potential customers. Who they are, what is most important to them, why they did or didn't buy, what they can do to serve them better, if they were satisfied with their purchase and if they'll buy again. I'm sorry but if they don't view avid readers as potential customers and aren't trying to understand them then they are fools and deserve to go out of business.

[Maggie Leung]

Originally Posted by Barcey

A business needs to understand their potential customers. Who they are, what is most important to them, why they did or didn't buy, what they can do to serve them better, if they were satisfied with their purchase and if they'll buy again. I'm sorry but if they don't view avid readers as potential customers and aren't trying to understand them then they are fools and deserve to go out of business.

I agree that it's any business's job to figure out how to stay afloat. If it can't, too bad. That's how the marketplace works.

Not all avid readers are potential buyers of new books, as many posters have volunteered. Some borrow or read freebies; some will spend only a few bucks per book. If a publisher decides that it needs or wants a certain profit margin to stay in business, it makes no sense to chase after every avid reader despite lack of ability or willingness to spend.

[DMB]

Reading and acquiring habits change over a lifetime anyway. When I was young and hard-up, I read as much as possible from libraries and haunted second-hand bookshops for out-of-print books. So the first books I bought were either new paperbacks or Victorian hardbacks.

As my career progressed I bought more new books but still borrowed a lot from libraries. For the past 26 years I have lived in non-English-speaking countries and my book-acquiring habits changed again: not much browsing in shops, avid reading of reviews, mail-order book-buying.

When Amazon started up, I mainly switched to the internet to buy new books. I still visited bookshops when in England, and I also found myself buying paperbacks from airport bookshops when I was travelling.

I don't keep all the books I buy. A lot of the airport ones go to charity. When we moved house in 2009 I had a big clearout and gave away 100s of books to a school for money-raising sales. But I still have thousands of books and I have a large backlog of unread books that I am gradually working my way through. I decided that when I hit 70 I had to think about downsizing a bit and that would involve getting rid of a lot of books that I might hang on to for nostalgic reasons but will probably never read again. So I am planning to shift a large number of my dtbooks when I get round to it.

I decided that an ereader would be a practical solution for me. Buying an ebook instead of a dt equivalent saves me small amounts of money because it saves on shelf space. (Publishers aren't the only ones who incur costs from storing books.) So far I have acquired quite a lot of free or very cheap classics, almost all of them books I already own in dt format. When I want a new book, I look first to see if it's available in eformat. If not, I probably won't buy it at all, unless it's a must-have reference book. I value the ereader for travelling. I can make sure that I have a sufficient variety of books loaded to keep me occupied in all moods.

I would buy a lot more books if more were available in eformat and if it weren't for the ridiculous geographic restrictions. I try hard to refrain from buying dtbooks.

[astra]

Originally Posted by L.J. Sellers

E-reader owners still buying as many print books

They missed me when conducting the survey.
I, gradually, stopped buying printed - hardback editions - books. Right now there are 3 printed books on my to-buy-list. Two of them are the last instalments in two series and the third is a leather bound copy of one of the other two. That's it.
It is possible that I might come across a book/series that I love so much that I would like to purchase special editions or at the very least hardback editions. However, in my 4 years ebook reading life, only Harry Potter has been awarded this honour. I have read a couple of books that I really loved, for example: The Book Thief, but when it comes to part with hard earned money, after I have read the story and know the ending...it is tough.

P.S. Naturally, I don't purchase any paperbacks or second hand books anymore. At all.

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by Barcey

So where is the question where they are asking e-book readers specifically if they are purchasing as many paper books as they did before?

http://www.versoadvertising.com/beasurvey/

That's a PowerPoint based on the survey from April 2010. I believe they ran another survey in December 2010, which is what the article in question is citing, but I don't see the PowerPoint anywhere yet.

Slide #38 is "E-readers Planned Paper Purchases Next 12 Months," and the results are only from people who already own ebook readers.

13% no paper purchases planned
13% not sure
15% 1-2 paper books
13% 3-4 books
17% 5-9 books
27% 10+ books

This roughly tracks to the number of all types of books actually purchased by all types of buyers in the previous year (slide 12).

It's not comparative to old habits, nor did they indicate that. What they're saying is that people who buy ebooks are still buying paper books, and sometimes a fairly large number.

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

I think that if I am not buying books, but I am getting lots of free books they should be concerned with my behavior.

Sorry, but I don't see why. You're just too darned cheap.

The survey does look into what prices people prefer to pay for ebooks and some basic questions about piracy.

But ultimately, the industry is going to look at things like how many people are actually purchasing books, where are they getting them, what format they prefer etc. So far there isn't much indication that people are stopping book purchases altogether simply because they bought an ebook reader. You'd need a significant chunk of the population to do that in order for anyone to take notice.

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by GA Russell

...if I have spent the big bucks on an eBook reader yet I am not spending money on eBooks, it would seem to me that that is a behavior both publishers and booksellers ought to be interested in knowing about.

Only if your buying patterns are in line with a significant number of ebook reader owners, which so far doesn't seem to be the case.

If a huge swath of people shared your propensities, I think you'd see substantial differences in the buying habits of the ebook reader owners. It's also possible that for every one new ebook owner who cuts back on purchases, another increases purchases due to, for example, greater convenience, easier impulse purchases and so forth.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by GA Russell

Right. So they are misrepresenting the group. Their generalizations are about their customers, not about the avid readers of America.

The point of the poll is not to make you feel good about yourself.

[queentess]

Like most people here, the only paper books I buy are ones that are graphic heavy or I need to write in. For me that means cookbooks and knitting patterns (though I now mostly buy these as pdf's from Ravelry or Etsy). I bought a couple pbooks as holiday gifts this year, but they were also graphic heavy, as my entire family has ereaders. I've purchased maybe 10 pbooks in the past year, and everything else I either buy in eversion or, if I'm really desperate, get from the library. I really hate reading pbook novels.

[lenseman]

I think it will take quite some time before people make a full transition over to ebooks. At the end of the day it is still a purchase of something either way. When the internet first became really popular and we witnessed what some refer to as the death of magazines it was because people realized they could read the same material found in a magazine on the internet for free. That made it a lot easier for many to transition away from print magazines completely within a fairly short period of time. With ebooks and ereaders you are still buying each book and I some people the idea of buying a book is subconsciously linked to the deeply rooter memory of sitting down with a book and flipping through the pages; enjoying that comes after the purchase if you will.

For others like me I tend to now get novels in ebook format and reserve my print purchases to graphic novels. I read a lot more graphic novels than I used to so I'm sure my buying 'stats' for printed books looks roughly the same.