Consumers who read e-books are increasing their purchase of books—both print and e-book formats—online and especially through in-app purchasing, and decreasing their use of brick-and-mortar stores, according to the first installment of Volume Three of the Book Industry Study Group's “Consumer Attitudes Toward E-Book Reading” survey. The newest edition of the survey, conducted by Bowker Market Research, found that more than half of e-book readers increased their use of apps to purchase books and more than one-third increased their use of general retail Web sites such as Amazon.com. The gains for these digital vendors come at the expense of brick and mortar bookstores with more than a third of e-book buyers decreasing their spending at national chains and 29% buying less from their local independent booksellers.
Findings also show that while dedicated e-readers remain the dominant e-reading platform, multi-function tablet devices and smartphones are gaining in popularity. According to the report, almost 17% of respondents indicated that tablets were the devices most used to read e-books—up from 13% in the previous survey, while respondents who preferred smartphones increased from 5.3% to 9.2%. Dedicated e-readers were preferred by 60.9% of all respondents, down from 71.6% in the previous survey.
For more information about the report, contact bisg.org.
