While I was at Digital Book World this week, an paidContent.org put out an article titled, E-Book Bummer: Growth Slower Than Thought—‘Incremental, Not Exponential. Of course Twitter blew up with authors and publishers retweeting it. If you read the numbers in any reasonable way, you’ll see that the headline is totally misleading.
In 2011, the number of book buyers who also purchased an e-book rose increased by 17% compared to 9% in 2010. Because some unnamed (or made up) generic industry people hoped for an increase of 25%-30% , this growth suddenly becomes incremental? If the U.S. economy grew at this rate, we’d be enjoying the boom of all booms.
When you really examine the facts here (the actual numbers put out by Bowkers and the Book Industry Study Group), there is only one conclusion that can be arrived at — ebooks will do for the publishing industry what smart phones did for the cell phone industry, and what the iPod did for the music industry. Once people get new and better technology, they don’t go back. The minute I got DVR, I threw away my VCR. The second my family got a microwave in the 1970s, we never made mac & cheese on a stove top again.
Gnaw on these tidbits:
- 26% of all book buyers own an eReader or tablet and have purchased at least one e-book. Of the 74% of book buyers who haven’t bought an e-book, 14% of those own an eReader or tablet. Who are these 14%? My mother used to be in that group. She owned an iPad, but even though she was a voracious reader, she didn’t buy ebooks, until she and my father went on a European vacation and she didn’t want to lug around ten pounds of books. Guess how she reads books now?
- Like my mother, 7 to 12 months after buying their first e-book, 72% of “power buyers” (people who purchase four or more books a month ), switch exclusively to ebooks.
Print is not dead by any means. There are still more casual print book buyers, percentage-wise, than there are for ebooks, but the gap is narrowing.
Spin the numbers any way you want and while you’re doing that see if you can find any portable CD players, VCRs, or rear-projection TVs on the shelves of any retailer today.
As you point out, Mark, the fact that there is a critical mass of ebook device users is the important part. Not how fast it is growing.
Everybody has bought a book at some point , but Kindles and Nook owners buy lots of books. You don’t buy a dedicated device like that for any other reason.
By owning such a device you self-identify as a power buyer. That gives publishers a simple way to identify the best prospects for their products. I ‘d hardly call that a bummer.
richard
Co-owner, BookLocker.com
Co-author, 90 DAYS OF PROMOTING YOUR BOOK ONLINE