Last week, I asked you to vote in my e-Reader polls. I’ve now compared those results to the polls I took last November. This time, about 28% more votes were counted, so I’ll compare the results in percentages.
In November, only 38% of you said you owned an e-Reader. That’s grown to 76% … exactly double in less than a year. Evidently, these gadgets are catching on. 🙂 Of particular interest to me is that the percentage of voters who said they NEVER want to own one has dropped from 28% to 5% in that time. Is this just peer pressure or have more people decided that e-Readers are not the devil in disguise?
The percentage of you who read e-Books on your smartphones had more than doubled—from 21% to 45%. And of course, many of us have an e-Reader, plus use an app on our smartphones for making good use of a few minutes waiting in line or traffic.
Here’s how the two polls compare on which e-Readers we own:
| e_Reader | November 2010 | July 2011 |
| Kindle | 41% | 64% |
| Nook | 3% | 14% |
| iPad | 2% | 17% |
| Sony | 1% | 5% |
| Kobo | 0% | 0% |
Interesting that both times not one person who visits my blog owns a Kobo. Poor Border’s. Obviously, Kindle is still far in the lead, but iPad, Nook and Sony have risen in popularity.
I love the convenience of e-Books, but I don’t think print books will disappear for some time. What do you think?
Linda Cassidy Lewis 
Though I see advantages of having an e-reader, they’re really not my cup of tea. I prefer the “old-fashioned” book. After awhile, my eyes grow tired of reading on a monitor and LCD display. At times, electronic text has a funky affect on my vision where my distant vision becomes blurred.
The Fahrenheit 451 scenario you referred in a reply to a previous comment has crossed my mind on several occasions. Even a writer at ZDNET noted the same concern – what would happen if someone decided to delete (or re-write) all the e-book titles? Who would object, who would protest? In a round-about way, it was a subject broached in an episode in the original Star Trek series.
Hopefully, the selections at Borders will be plentiful and varied at their liquidation sale.
LikeLike
The thing about my Kindle, fivecats, is that it’s not like reading on a monitor at all. It’s no more strain on my eyes than reading on paper. There’s no backlight like on your computer screen. I think the Nook is the same, but I don’t think the iPad is. If you know someone with a Kindle or Nook, try it out.
LikeLike