Quote:
Originally Posted by melmurray
Is age profile another factor in the slooow rise of the ebook reader? The MP3 players are targeted at a youth market. Music is cool in a way books aren't. Judging by the reminiscences above we are mostly an over thirties, over forties crowd. That might have some influence on the investment companies are prepared to make at this stage.
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The demographics of readers are skewed in the same way that this forum appears, anecdotally, to be. The NEA's (
National Endowment for the Arts, a US gov't organization) 2004 report
"Reading at Risk" spotted this as well. As the population aged, the demographics who did most of the reading aged with it. The younger age groups reported very little reading.
It takes a different slant in both marketing and design to appeal to an older age group. That's why Cadillac uses Led Zepplin for its ads. They're not aiming for twenty-somethings. I carry a Rio Karma as my DAP. It's not that common, so a lot of people don't recognize it. Everyone who has asked me about it has been in his twenties. Every person who has asked me about my Sony Reader, though, has been forty or older.
So far, e-book information has mostly spread through online communities. That's an arena that I think, on the average, self-selects for younger age groups. Sony's smattering of ads aside, no one has really tried mainstream marketing in the e-book arena yet. That's one of the things that I'm hoping Amazon will be able to help with. They already have the ear of a huge percentage of the reading population. They have a chance to make a very big splash with little investment.