Results of NMC Two Minute Survey on eBooks
Posted October 13th, 2009 by Alan Levine 
Last week we launched an NMC Two Minute Survey on eBook reading activity and preferences for reading digital texts. (image credit: Flickr CC Licensed Photo by antonio.tombolino)
The Questions We asked:
- How many eBooks have you read this year?
- What is the primary device on which you read electronic books?
- What would you feel comfortable spending for a single eBook ($US)?
The Results (view full spreadsheet)
We recorded 217 people having completed this survey. Let's look at the results..
The largest response to the first question indicates 38% of the respondents have not finished reading an eBook this year, including people who don't read electronic texts, or people who just have not finished one. Looking then at the people who have read an eBook this year, a quarter of our survey participants have read between two and five titles this year. And while it is a small percentage (11%), it is interesting to note the numbers that have read more than 10 eBooks.
We might expect for this numbers to change next year if we run the survey again; these devices are likely to be popular holiday gifts.
For the devices, people use to read eBooks, most readers (37%) in our survey use their computer:
The Amazon kindle has the next highest usage (25%) which is higher if you consider the 14% who use a Kindle on a mobile device. Between the Kindle and Stanza, and a few mentioned under "other", mobile eReader devices are used by a quarter of our survey participants. In the "other" responses were:
- None/not applicable (13)... "eBooks are brain-dead as currently constituted" "I don't read electronic books! Scandalous, isn't it?"
- Other iPhone app (4) BeamItDown, playshakespeare.com, Eucalyptus, Classics for iPhone
- too expensive (2)
- I read books in print / I hate to read online (2)
- All of the above
- B&N eReader
- PDA
- Waiting
Probably the most interesting responses were in the third question where we tried to gauge where people feel eBooks should be priced:
The majority of respondents (60%) expect eBooks to be priced well below the price of a paperback book or even lower amounts. In fact, less than 10% feel that an eBook price should be in the price range of a print version.
We hope you spread the word on our Two Minute Surveys available at http://www.nmc.org/2minute-survey. Look for a new one in November! If you have an idea for a survey, just contact us with three questions we should ask about a technology or new media practice.
