Many E-Book Borrowers Buy Too…
Says Pew Study. From Digital Book World:
Publishers worried that readers who borrow e-books from libraries don’t buy books can put those worries to rest.
According to a new study from the Pew Internet and American Life project, those who borrow e-books from libraries also purchase e-books. When e-book borrowers were asked by Pew how they acquired the last e-book they read, 41% said they bought it.
“E-book borrowers are book lovers,” said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet project. “They the heaviest book-reading cohort of the ones we measured. They are more into books than even e-book readers, the larger group they fall into.”
E-book borrowers represent about 12% of e-book readers, according to the study. Among e-book readers, about 21% of the population per a Pew study from earlier in the year, the buy rate is a slightly higher 55%.
For Rainie, the takeaway is that e-book borrowers are slightly more likely to borrow an e-book than e-book readers, but are still heavy book buyers.
Read the rest of the story here: Digital Book World
– Julia Barrett
Books in General, Bookstores, Ebook Lending, Ebook/Ereader Growth, Ebooks, Marketing
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This is good to know. I often wonder what benefit I would get from having my e-book in a library (other than the one sale.)
Publishers have a history of ignoring “power readers.” People who read 3+ books a week. I used to buy a lot of paperbacks, then that got too expensive. So I hit the used book stores and the library. Now with ebooks, I’m back to buying again. But I’m not buying expensive ebooks. I have a budget.
At the library, I find a lot of good writers that I go on to buy. But not in $25 hardcovers. Well, not too many anyway. Heh.
I’m a devoted used book buyer, the cheaper the better. Used copies for a penny and yard sale books. I can either sell them back for a penny or donate them to the library.
Even better I can pick up books at the yearly library sale and get a tax donation.
I too love to purchase inexpensive books for hubby’s Kindle. But if I read correctly, there will be, or are, increasing incentives for authors to raise prices.
Do you think the $.99 book will become a thing of the past? I can’t imagine uploading a short work and selling it for more than $.99.
If there is an audience for it, there will be writers for it.
For the most part, it’ll be pulp, but there will be all sorts of great things in among the not so great.
And, given that somebody (*cough* Amazon *cough*) will be smart enough to recognize that sales you can expand your audience, premium stuff is likely to be available cheap on a temporary basis now and then.
I’ve tried e-book borrowing from our library. It’s such a horrendous process that I’d rather pay a few dollars for the book than go through the hassle of installing the software, creating accounts, handing Adobe a complete list of all the books I borrow and reading it in a dedicated e-book reader program rather than the Kindle program which is much better.
Audio books were even worse as we spent about fifteen minutes working out how to download it, another fifteen minutes figuring out what the arcane error message from Windows Media Player meant, another few minutes updating Media Player twice and then changing iTunes settings and finally got an error message saying ‘this iPod cannot play this file’.
This is important! Not just for library borrowing, but for some of the arguments about DMR. Being able to lend an e-book to a friend, etc.
Thanks for posting this!
Oh no, people borrow ebooks! The next thing you know people are going to start checking books out of libraries and all bookstores will go out of business…..
Yeah, people freak out about the most amazing things. Libraries haven’t killed bookstores and the ability to borrow ebooks won’t keep people from buying them as well. I get a lot of free ebooks off of Amazon for my Kindle, but I also buy a lot of ebooks, and that’s never going to change.