Literacy news
The Bookseller reveals findings from annual survey
21 Jun 2010
The Bookseller magazine has published the findings of its third annual survey, Reading the Future. The survey investigates consumers' reading habits.
Results revealed that only 26% of respondents have ever heard of a Kindle, and only 41% knew what a Sony Reader was. The iPad fared much better - 60% had heard of it. This was an incredible result as the research was conducted before the iPad was officially launched in the UK.
A combined total of 70% said they would "definitely not" (32.3%) or were "unlikely" (36.8%) to buy any sort of e-reader in the coming year. The survey, it should be noted, was conducted online and respondents had to be book readers.
Tom Tivnan at The Bookseller said:
“The bottom line is that e-readers are still not appealing to the vast majority of the reading public. And never mind appealing, they have never even heard of them. The things they have heard of are machines most people use every day: the Blackberry (73%), the iPhone (73%), even the Nintendo DS (74%). It should not go unnoticed that all these devices' primary function is not book reading. And the driver for the iPad for most customers, as sexy and appealing it is for books, will not be because of the iBookstore, it is its multi-functionality.”
“The only way forward I can see for a dedicated e-reader is to drive price down. After the launch of the iPad, who would want to buy an e-reader (particularly a monochrome one), when you can get an iPad for around the same ball-park price-wise, and it will play video, surf the web etc? And our survey backs that up. The main driver for customers who said they could be persuaded to buy an e-book was that if it 'cost less than £100.'”
Read the full article at The Bookseller
