Pew report finds tablet, e-book ownership nearly doubled over the holidays

[DonaldL.]

Pew report finds tablet, e-book ownership nearly doubled over the holidays

A report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project set to be released Monday found that 29 percent of Americans owned at least one tablet or e-reader as of the beginning of this month. That’s up from 18 percent who said the same in December.

[taosaur]

Hehe, I recruited two family members to ereading over the holidays--an e-reader for my uncle and a phone loaded w/ books for my sister.

[fjtorres]

That particular report is a bit confusing: first it says 29% of all americans own one or the other. That would be around 100 million people.
A little lower, it says *adults*. And that would be around 70 milion.
Either way it's a big number but I suspect 70 million is closer to it. Allowing for overlap that would be 40 million or so of each.

Which sounds about right, no?
And a honking lot of potential ebook buyers.

[Andrew H.]

I wonder what this means for e-ink sales?

Surveys in the US have suggested that about 10-15% of the adult population reads 12 or more books per year. And that 60% read at least one book per year.

I would assume that the 20% of the adult population who owns an e-book reader would include most of the 12-or-more group and the remainder would be people who didn't quite meet the 12 book cutoff.

But I would imagine that e-books sales will plateau as the remaining population without e-book readers ends up being less frequent readers. If you only read 4 books a year, for example, are you really going to buy an e-ink reader?

[taosaur]

Ebooks (though not necessarily eink) may also increase readership. I bet my sister will read more ebooks this year than she did DTBs in the previous three or four years combined, just because she always has them handy. Tons of people on this forum report reading far more once they have a device. With increasingly ubiquitous smartphones as a 'gateway' device, we may see the book market itself expand considerably.

[speakingtohe]

I often wonder if there are people who read 4 or 3 or 3-7 etc. books a year. My mother who is 87 still reads around 60 books a year. My sister, who is 59, hasn't read 4 books since leaving school.

I have a friend who only reads when a book is highly recommended, or on an airplane but he manages to choke down a dozen or more a year. I have many friends who read none, and many who read at least 3 a week.

Who are these 4 book a year people and where do they live? Do they read a book at a single sitting or 2-6 pages a day.

I guess what puzzles me is if you don't like to read why bother, and if you like to read how can you only read 4 books a year?

Helen

[Synamon]

People who don't like to read don't read any books. People who like to read, but have no time might read only 4 books a year. They are probably reading other things regularly (journals, reports, textbooks) for their job or school and get their reading jones filled by that.

My husband reads 4 books a year, all on our winter holiday. The rest of the year he reads journals or textbooks or whatever for his work. He's about three years behind on those. He also listens to audiobooks while he drives to work, runs, works out, does other hobbies. He's been reading more books since I got him a Kindle, because it's easy to snag a few minutes here and there to read with it. He reads journal articles on it more than books though.

[taosaur]

I'm sure there were at least two or three years in my twenties where I read maybe half a dozen books all year, and mostly it wasn't work keeping me busy