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?
Hi, Linda. We have two Kindles in our home. We love the convenience and the fact that we don’t have books overflowing bookshelves. I really hope that brick and mortar stores figure out how to stay afloat (sorry, Borders). I really would miss them if they were all gone.
-Jimmy
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Perhaps if the big stores fail, the small ones will rise again, Jimmy. 🙂
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I agree Linda. I have ebooks but there are times when you want to curl up with a good book…the book feels better for snuggling.
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This probably sounds stupid, Chris, but I’m a bit claustrophobic and sometimes I feel too closed in reading on my Kindle, so I have to switch to a print book for a while. I’d better shush or they will be sending the men with butterfly nets after me. 😕
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It would be interesting to know how many people own e-readers and actually read books off them? Maybe they just download the books, but don’t get aroundt o reading them?
Interesting stats.
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I would think that anyone who has a reader does read on them, Nicole, but I would be surprised to find that they’ve read everything they download. There are a LOT of free books, for Kindle at least, and I, for example, have quite a few classics I’ve downloaded and have yet to look at.
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I am not into sci fi, but what if all written is electronic and we have some giant solar flare or shift in the Universe, or Big Brother learns how to disrupt and control it? Let’s not go there.
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I’ve thought about this too, Mary Jean. I doubt many people have bought e-book duplicates of all their print books and then sold off, or gave away, the print books, but I shudder to think that will happen. My first thought when I heard about Kindle was along the lines of the Fahrenheit 451 future destruction of books scenario, only the books wouldn’t be burned, just deleted en masse from e-Readers.
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Ha! If I had said that, people would be all over me calling me everything from a nut case to a conspiracy theorist. There’s a dystopian writer buried in you somewhere, Mary Jean. LOL
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I still remember how excited I was when the first Borders opened near me in the Boston suburbs. I loved, loved, loved all the books, music and excitement crammed in one place and am sorry to see them go. I love me my local independent bookstores as well, but there was just something so GRAND about that many pages and CDs all mingling together in one building.
Just watched Steve Jobs talk about iCloud and that’s exciting, too. There’s a place for paper books and a place for eBooks. I’m just glad there’s so much interesting stuff available inside both of them.
Thanks for this survey – interesting. I’m finding in terms of my own sales of Just Desserts so far, Kindle is the leader.
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I don’t even know what iCloud is, Natasha. My print books sales were twice my e-book sales the first couple months, but e-books caught up, and those are probably 96% Kindle.
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