From ThinkNum:
What kind of book reader are you? 20th-century novels? Non-fiction biographies? Self-help? Has your book buying been usurped by a child who wants nothing but books about bugs?
Whatever kind of book buyer you are, it turns out that the format via which you read – e-book or paper – could predict what it is you’re reading.
That’s because, according to our data in which we track top sales of books at Amazon, highest-ranking titles in the Kindle store differ vastly than those in Amazon’s standard print-books category.
Overall, when it comes to Kindle e-books, thriller novels are king. But when it comes to print books, self-help reigns supreme.
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Link to the rest at ThinkNum
This is pretty unscientific — from the OP, their approach only considers books ranked in the Top 100 of a few hand-picked categories, and even then, only the handful of books that stayed in those categories all month — basically, just tallying the # of big-ticket long-term bestsellers in each category while ignoring 90%+ of all books purchased each day.
Not surprising their conclusions are so obviously wonky…
I reluctantly bought a Fire specifically for non-fiction. History books by a wide margin, but also reference books, especially on writing, or Every Day Life in Historical Age X, etc. Reason being that the history books, especially by academic presses, are now published by people who secretly despise readers: 9pt font with tight leading is very hard on the eyes. And some of them go even smaller. I prefer the random access of print, but I love not getting a headache even more.
My Kindle is for fiction. I will buy paperback or hardcover novels, but only for authors whose books I love so much that I want them to have the extra royalty. That includes indies, too.
I read novels almost exclusively on Kindle. I road-test nonfic on Kindle, then if the content justifies it, I buy the physical book. Not always. There’s a series of 3 books I love that are doorstep-size and price that I’d love to buy in print, but unlikely to happen.
I can’t tear the pages out of the kindle to have just what I need in front of me. Though I do lots of screen shoots for google maps while planning routes.
My mother on the other hand get’s all her ‘how to’ stuff off the web and warms up the printer (at least she’s down from her three boxes of paper a year when she was digging more into genealogy! 😉 )
Genealogy is certainly an unacknowledged environmental hazard…
Mine would go through at least a dozen a year – with a dot matrix printer!
So, Kindle readers apparently read nothing but fiction and biography?
Not just…
But…
eBooks cater best to what used to be the paperback originals market: avid genre readers. No shock that those should be the dominant genres.
Plus, you don’t yet see much non-fiction on the Indie side (too dependent on the payday loans) and with trad-pub ebook pricing…
(On top of that, a good chunk of the non-fiction market in both print and digital has migrated to websites, either free or subscription. A migration that is still in progress.)
I expect the last strongholds of print will be litfic and children’s chapterbooks. But it’ll take time: a couple of decades.
Also: note he’s only looking at the top ten.
Also: note he is only looking at the top ten, which is heavily influenced by Kindle First.
A more useful look would go 50-100 deep.
Odds are, though, he’d find the same thing but somewhat different ratios.
Can’t say I agree with you. I have a ton of non-fiction on my KIndle: trad, indie, and free, as from Gutenberg, and others. History, criminal justice, books on writing and self-publishing, and probably more that I can’t think of at the moment.
If you’re not interested much in non-fiction, then you’re not going to be aware of what’s out there.
Kindle handles fiction and simple narrative very well. It doesn’t do nearly as well with lots of nonfiction.
When books are available in both eBook and paper, people choose what works best for them.
Many people are not “Kindle readers. They are readers who use both Kindle and paper.
I recently decided to read Game of Thrones, and became a hybrid reader. I opened it on the Kindle, and found the maps were a mess. Awful presentation. So, I bought a paper copy. I read outside in the sun friendly Kindle, inside on a backlit tablet, and look at the maps in the paper book.