Nick Hornby on e-books
Author Nick Hornby weighs in on the subject of e-books on his personal blog. Generally speaking, if Hornby is agin’ it, this particular Quillblogger is fer it, and vice-versa. But it must be said that he makes some fair points here, mostly avoiding the usual shibboleths about books being so wonderfully tactile. Instead, he poses some hard questions about the likely market demand for digital literature – especially as contrasted with music, which is the usual point of comparison.
[T]he truth is that people don’t like reading books much anyway: a 2004 survey of two thousand adults found that thirty-four per cent didn’t read books at all. The music industry’s problems are many and profound, but you never see advertisements asking us to listen to more music; there are no pressure groups or government quangos attempting to ensure that we make room in our day for a little Leona Lewis. The problem is getting people to pay for music, not getting people to consume it. Can you see every teenager in Britain harassing their parents for a Kindle? Me neither.
The average Kindle user is not a teenager that would have to harass their parents to buy one. The average user are the parents and grandparents. There are over 3500 user reviews on the Kindle site. There are also a lot of discussion groups. In one of those discussion groups, the topic is about the age of the Kindle user. There are a few kids and teenagers that use them, but the overwhelming majority are adults…adults over 40 years old…adults over 50 years old….adults over 60 years old…adults over 70 years old…adults who have arthritis and have problems holding 500 page books…adults who need larger fonts to be able to avoid using reading glasses….adults who can afford to travel and take vacations and like a device that weighs ten ounces that takes the place of several heavy books.
The average Kindle user does not have to harass anyone into buying one…they just buy one….they have money.
If you look in the Kindle discussions group, you will see that the average user is not a teenager. The people who love the Kindle are the baby boomers.