What Do Readers Like? Survey Results!
E-book Formatting Fairies conducted a fascinating survey:
I’ve recently concluded the first of what I hope will be a
regular reader survey. Putting a finger on the pulse of the customer is always
a good idea in business, and our business is no exception. I drafted the
questions with the help and input of numerous other authors who took advantage
of the opportunity to ask some of their most burning questions.
The survey was conducted from June 1-30, 2013, via Survey
Monkey, and as many as 2,951 people replied to most of the 44 questions
formulated by myself and more than a dozen other authors.
To summarize the most
interesting results…
- Readers prefer e-books to paperbacks (77 to 52 percent). However, the question allowed readers to choose all formats that apply, and there appears to be crossover between the two most popular formats, indicating some readers buy books in multiple formats when the paperback is available. I think it’s extremely interesting to note that more than half are still looking for their books in paperback. That will be a number to watch in future surveys. Will it go down or remain steady at about half?
- Nearly 80 percent buy their books from Amazon, with Barnes & Noble scoring a distant second at 23 percent and iBookstore/Apple coming in third at nearly 13 percent. I’ll be interested to see how this result changes or shifts over the next year. I believe first place will remain around the same percentage while the distance between second and third place will continue to narrow.
- Nearly 58 percent of those surveyed have not visited a brick and mortar bookstore in the last year or have done so twice in the last year. Twenty-five percent visit a bookstore once a month and twenty percent are there twice a month or more.
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