Technology News
- 27 December 2012, 16:02
E-reading up as paper books suffer
The tastes of the reading public seem to be turning digital.
A Pew Internet Research Centre survey has found that the percentage of Americans aged 16 and older who read an e-book grew from 16% in 2011 to 23% this year.
Readers of traditional books dropped from 72% to 67%. Overall, those reading books of any kind dropped from 78% to 75%, a shift Pew called statistically insignificant.
Those owning an e-book device or tablet jumped from 18% to 33%, with much of that increase coming from last year's holiday season, when millions received Kindles, Nooks and other e-readers as gifts.
Awareness that libraries offer digital texts grew from 24% to 31%.
The telephone survey of 2,252 people aged 16 and older was conducted from Oct. 15 to Nov. 10. It has a sampling error margin of plus or minus 2.3 percentage points.
SagePhotoWorld
2:17am on 30/12/2012
Certain things lend themselves to e-readers. Things like novels which you read from end to end and then never again. Computer manuals - because otherwise they're too heavy. Things like reference books - not so much. I find with a reference book, I have various fingers wedged between pages as I cross-reference. Doing this on an ereader is an abysmal experience.