Do E-Reader Owners Buy More Books Than Others?

According to at least one survey, they do. GigaOM cites this L.E.K. Consulting survey that seems to prove that owners of e-readers are reading more than they read before purchasing the readers - and that a substantial percentage of their reading is of recently published books:

Of the 10 percent of consumers who own e-readers, 48 percent told L.E.K. that they were reading more books vs. just 7 percent who said their book reading decreased. E-reader owners also said they were reading more newspapers than before (59 percent) and more magazines (44 percent). According to L.E.K., 36 percent of the books read by people with e-readers are “incremental consumption,” representing new books rather than books the owner would otherwise have read in print.

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“The fact that Amazon sold more Kindle books than printed books on Christmas Day 2009 speaks volumes,” L.E.K. vice president Dan Schechter said in a news release. “We’ve dubbed the 10 percent of consumers who own an e-reader as the ‘E-reader Republic,’ and think that it is a potential goldmine for content providers and advertisers alike.”

While iPod owners consumed about nine hours per week of new media, e-reader owners consumed more than 18 hours a week. L.E.K. said the survey is considered demographically representative of the U.S. population over 18 years of age.

This kind of news has to be encouraging to publishers despite the fear that low e-book prices might make consumers more resistant to the significantly higher prices publishers charge for physical copies of the same books. Publishers need to adapt quickly, and logically, if they want to avoid the fate of the big record labels. Have you been to a record store lately? Let's not let the same thing happen to bookstores.