In partnership with Digital Book World, Verso Digital has run a new survey of reader behavior on our network (with huge thanks, again, for the work of Burst Media on all these surveys). The results will be presented at next week’s Digital Book World Conference. But already word is getting out there about some of our findings:
Shelf Awareness notes that the survey suggests good news for independent booksellers. Not only is it true that “E-reader owners are buying nearly as many print books as e-books,” but also that “81.7% of all e-reader owners said that if e-books are priced competitively, they will buy them from indies.”
Publishers Weekly picks up on one of the new questions in this year’s survey, revealing that “the library remains an important source of books for readers, with 45% saying they borrow books from libraries, the largest single channel for getting a book.”
The Bookseller also highlighted the 81.7% figure, headlining their post “Consumers ready to buy e-books from indies.”
On his weekly Twitter conversation, #pubQT, Ron Hogan posted: “Interesting bit from the new Verso/DBW survey: Consumers SLIGHTLY more likely to say they buy books from indies.” Then followed up with, “However, WOMEN (who drive the book market) are 7% more likely to prefer retail chains to their local indie bookseller.”
We look forward to presenting the information in full next week, and discussing implications with clients, readers and everybody in the publishing community in the coming weeks.