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Winter 2011 Kindle Nation Citizen Survey Results: Kindle’s “Extra” Features Continue to Have Wide Usage

(One of several Kindle Nation posts exploring the results of the Winter 2011 Kindle Nation Citizen Survey. Click here to see a breakdown of results.) 
 
 
By Tom Dulaney, Contributing Reporter

Jeff Bezos says the Kindle is and always will be, first and foremost, a dedicated ebook reader. And he’s right, of course.

 
But here at Kindle Nation we have been aware of the appeal of other features ever since our publisher Steve Windwalker hit the Kindle Store bestseller list back in January 2008 with the first “ebook” on how to use the Kindle for email. (The short piece later became part of the #1 bestselling book in the Kindle Store for the entire calendar year 2008.)


So, the Kindle may not be the ultimate convergence device, but readers do a lot more than buy and read ebooks on their Kindles. However, no other feature of the dedicated ebook reading tool compares to the book reading function in either usage or performance ratings.


The Kindle’s many other features find use and favor with scattered blocks of the 2,275 people who responded to the Winter 2011 Kindle Nation Citizen Survey. Taken, together they are certainly part of the package of features that makes the Kindle the most popular ebook reader ever, and the most popular product ever sold by Amazon.

Presented here, arranged in order of usage and appeal with most popular first, are other Kindle features and our survey respondents’ ratings of them.

The three most popular non-ebook pastimes — newspaper reading, blog reading, and Kindles games — each come in with 35% to 36% of respondents.


Just over a third of respondents—a fraction under 36%–rated the Kindle for newspaper reading, and 8% say its performance is “superior” while 28% call it “useful, even if flawed.”

About the same percentage — 35% of respondents — subscribe to blogs that they read on their Kindles. About half of these Kindle Nation citizens read blogs nearly every day.

How well does the Kindle do in delivering blogs? Some 12% rate it as “superior” as a blog reader, while 20% find it “useful even if flawed” for a total of 32%. 57% of respondents saying blog reading is not important to them, 5% saying it’s a distraction, and 6% unaware of the feature.

Playing word games or using other Kindle apps and utilities occupies about 35% of readers, with 11% saying the use of such features on the device is “superior” while 24% say it is “useful even if flawed.” But 65% don’t play games for these reasons: 6% said “I was not aware of this feature,” 14% find gaming an annoyance or distraction; and 45% say it is just not important to them.

And one of our favorite features—sending personal documents and manuscripts to the Kindle—is used by 26% of all respondents, with 2% doing so daily, 6% weekly and 18% “sometimes.”  About 21% said they were unaware of the feature, and 53% said they “rarely use” it.

Their ratings of the document reading feature: 25% find it useful even if flawed, and 9% rate the feature “superior.” About 53% said it was not important to them, 8% were unaware of the feature, and 5% found it a distraction.

The text-to-speech feature of the Kindle is used by a sizeable group of 25% of respondents, with 2% listening daily, 4% weekly and 19% “sometimes.” Two thirds—66%–say they use text-to-speech rarely. 8% call text-to-speech “superior” and 29% term it “useful if flawed.”

The Kindle gets significant use from owners checking email and browsing the web. In a question about usage, the survey combined email checking and web browsing. About 25% overall use the features, with 17% doing so “sometimes,” another 5% weekly, and 3% daily. And 56% said they rarely check email with their Kindles, while 19% were unaware that they could.

But that’s usage for email and web browsing. What about performance?

A second question broke out the Kindle’s two features: email and web browsing. For email, only 1% rate the Kindle “superior,” while 23% say it is “useful if flawed.”

As a web browser, only 2% rate the Kindle as “superior” as a web browser, and 28% call it “useful, if flawed.”

The survey combined two audio features to ask respondents how often they used their Kindles to listen to audiobooks and/or music. Some 12% listen to music or audiobooks on their Kindles, about half as many as text-to speech. About 1% listen daily, 3% listen weekly and 8 percent listen “sometimes.”

eBook Leaders Show Random House Sitting Pretty As Amazon’s Kindle Store Discounting Plays Crucial Role in Picking Winners

Related posts: 
By Steve Windwalker
For the past few weeks, we’ve been paying more attention than usual to the USA Today bestseller lists that come out each Thursday because they have provided a fascinating window into the changes that are taking places in what we read and the publishing sources for the books that we are reasing.
Once again, the USA Today top 50 list for the week ended February 13, 2011 shows a healthy representation of titles for which the ebook format is the highest-selling format. There are 19 such titles this week and we provide a full list of those 19 titles below, with their list prices and Kindle Store prices as of today.
For each of the titles listed here, the first price shown is the publisher’s list price as reported by USA Today, and the second, linked price is the Kindle Store price. Wherever the publisher is a participant in the agency-model price-fixing scheme, the two prices will often be the same. For other books, Amazon may discount the book further for Kindle customers at its discretion.

  • 2.        Alone           Lisa Gardner,  Bantam State  (F) (E)   $0.99 $0.99
  • 3.        The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo           Stieg Larsson,  Vintage  (F) (E)   $14.95  $5.00
  • 4.        The Girl Who Played With Fire           Stieg Larsson,  Knopf Doubleday (F) (E)   $25.95 $5.00
  • 5.        Unbroken           Laura Hillenbrand,  Random House (NF) (E)   $27.00 $9.99
  • 6.        The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest           Stieg Larsson,  Knopf (F) (E)   $27.95  $9.99
  • 8.        A Discovery of Witches           Deborah E. Harkness,  Viking Adult (F) (E)   $14.99 $14.99 
  • 9.        Water for Elephants           Sara Gruen,  Algonquin (F) (E)   $14.95 $5.00 
  • 15.        Cutting for Stone: A Novel           Abraham Verghese,  Knopf A (F) (E)   $26.95 $5.00 
  • 17.        Switched           Amanda Hocking,  Self-published through CreateSpace (F) (E)   $2.99 $0.99
  • 20.        I Am Number Four           Pittacus Lore,  HarperCollins Youth (F) (E)   $17.99 $9.99      
  • 21.        The Confession           John Grisham,  Doubleday (F) (E)   $28.95 $9.99 
  • 24.        The Help           Kathryn Stockett,  Putnam (E)   $12.99  $12.99        
  • 27.        Ascend           Amanda Hocking,  Self-published through CreateSpace (F) (E)   $2.99 $2.99
  • 31.        Torn           Amanda Hocking,  Self-published through CreateSpace (F) (E)   $2.99 $2.99
  • 34.        Room           Emma Donoghue,  Little, Brown (F) (E)   $11.99  $11.99          
  • 42.        What the Night Knows           Dean Koontz,  Bantam (F) (E)   $28.00  $9.99   
  • 44.        Dead or Alive           Tom Clancy, Grant Blackwood,  Putnam (F) (E)   $14.99 $12.99  
  • 46.        Strategic Moves           Stuart Woods,  Putnam (F) (E)   $12.99 $12.99
  • 48.        The Perfect Husband           Lisa Gardner,  Bantam (F) (E)   $7.99 $5.00 
While we are looking, a couple of other tidbits that caught our attention:
Among traditional publishers, Random House and its imprints are the place to be for authors these days. Random House is the leading traditional publisher in the U.S., and some may have been nervous for its authors when Random decided to abstain from the agency-model price-fixing scheme and, in the bargain, from the much-hyped Apple iBooks Store. But Random and its imprints and authors have benefited hugely from the price flexibility that Amazon and other retailers have been allowed, especially since the publisher and the authors get paid based on full list price even if a title is discounted below wholesale cost in the Kindle Store and elsewhere. Sixteen of the USA Today Top 50 are published by Random and its imprints, which is a dominant position given other changes in the composition of he bestseller lists. Given that Random has achieved that position without a single sale through the iBooks store, that dominance speaks eloquently of the utter failure of iBooks.   
Meanwhile, Amazon and others should take very seriously the king-making role that results from the company’s selective discounting for Kindle titles. It seems very likely that a fabulous book-group natural like Elizabeth Stuckey-French’s novel The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady should be headed straight to the highest rungs of the Kindle Store bestseller list, especially after recent rave reviews in the New York Times, Denver Post, Boston Globe, and Kindle Nation Daily. The book is published by Random imprint Doubleday, which means that Amazon controls price and discounting in the Kindle Store just as brick-and-mortar booksellers control price and discounting for the hardcover edition. But with Amazon selling the Kindle edition for $13.90, Jeff Bezos and his minions might as well be standing at the gates of bestseller heaven blocking the entrance of one of the more distinctive, independent voices to come along in American fiction in recent years. It says here that as soon as Amazon brings the retail price of Revenge down to the $5-$10 promotional price sweet spot provided for Stieg Larsson, Sara Gruen, John Grisham and others, it will have another bestseller in the making.

Winter 2011 Kindle Nation Citizen Survey Results: Kindle’s "Extra" Features Continue to Have Wide Usage

(One of several Kindle Nation posts exploring the results of the Winter 2011 Kindle Nation Citizen Survey. Click here to see a breakdown of results.) 
 
By Tom Dulaney, Contributing Reporter

Jeff Bezos says the Kindle is and always will be, first and foremost, a dedicated ebook reader. And he’s right, of course.


But here at Kindle Nation we have been aware of the appeal of other features ever since our publisher Steve Windwalker hit the Kindle Store bestseller list back in January 2008 with the first “ebook” on how to use the Kindle for email. (The short piece later became part of the #1 bestselling book in the Kindle Store for the entire calendar year 2008.)


So, the Kindle may not be the ultimate convergence device, but readers do a lot more than buy and read ebooks on their Kindles. However, no other feature of the dedicated ebook reading tool compares to the book reading function in either usage or performance ratings.


The Kindle’s many other features find use and favor with scattered blocks of the 2,275 people who responded to the Winter 2011 Kindle Nation Citizen Survey. Taken, together they are certainly part of the package of features that makes the Kindle the most popular ebook reader ever, and the most popular product ever sold by Amazon.

Presented here, arranged in order of usage and appeal with most popular first, are other Kindle features and our survey respondents’ ratings of them.

The three most popular non-ebook pastimes — newspaper reading, blog reading, and Kindles games — each come in with 35% to 36% of respondents.


Just over a third of respondents—a fraction under 36%–rated the Kindle for newspaper reading, and 8% say its performance is “superior” while 28% call it “useful, even if flawed.”

About the same percentage — 35% of respondents — subscribe to blogs that they read on their Kindles. About half of these Kindle Nation citizens read blogs nearly every day.

How well does the Kindle do in delivering blogs? Some 12% rate it as “superior” as a blog reader, while 20% find it “useful even if flawed” for a total of 32%. 57% of respondents saying blog reading is not important to them, 5% saying it’s a distraction, and 6% unaware of the feature.

Playing word games or using other Kindle apps and utilities occupies about 35% of readers, with 11% saying the use of such features on the device is “superior” while 24% say it is “useful even if flawed.” But 65% don’t play games for these reasons: 6% said “I was not aware of this feature,” 14% find gaming an annoyance or distraction; and 45% say it is just not important to them.

And one of our favorite features—sending personal documents and manuscripts to the Kindle—is used by 26% of all respondents, with 2% doing so daily, 6% weekly and 18% “sometimes.”  About 21% said they were unaware of the feature, and 53% said they “rarely use” it.

Their ratings of the document reading feature: 25% find it useful even if flawed, and 9% rate the feature “superior.” About 53% said it was not important to them, 8% were unaware of the feature, and 5% found it a distraction.

The text-to-speech feature of the Kindle is used by a sizeable group of 25% of respondents, with 2% listening daily, 4% weekly and 19% “sometimes.” Two thirds—66%–say they use text-to-speech rarely. 8% call text-to-speech “superior” and 29% term it “useful if flawed.”

The Kindle gets significant use from owners checking email and browsing the web. In a question about usage, the survey combined email checking and web browsing. About 25% overall use the features, with 17% doing so “sometimes,” another 5% weekly, and 3% daily. And 56% said they rarely check email with their Kindles, while 19% were unaware that they could.

But that’s usage for email and web browsing. What about performance?

A second question broke out the Kindle’s two features: email and web browsing. For email, only 1% rate the Kindle “superior,” while 23% say it is “useful if flawed.”

As a web browser, only 2% rate the Kindle as “superior” as a web browser, and 28% call it “useful, if flawed.”

The survey combined two audio features to ask respondents how often they used their Kindles to listen to audiobooks and/or music. Some 12% listen to music or audiobooks on their Kindles, about half as many as text-to speech. About 1% listen daily, 3% listen weekly and 8 percent listen “sometimes.”

Kindle Nation Daily Free Book Alert, Friday, February 18: Letters to a Soldier Preview Tops Three Brand New Freebie Pre-Orders! plus … Horror, Humor, and Heroes 2 by Jim Bernheimer (Today’s Sponsor)

Three new “preview” and “bonus” pre-orders from MacMillan top this morning’s freshly updated presentation of over 200 Free Book Alert listings … The price is right, but will you bite?


But first, a word from … Today’s Sponsor

This mix of traditional and urban fantasy stories has been handpicked to entertain, amuse, and provoke, from the editor who brought you the original Horror, Humor, and Heroes


Horror, Humor and Heroes Volume 2 was a great buy and I would recommended it to everyone.” 
–Jude C.

Horror, Humor, and Heroes Volume 2 – New Faces of Fantasy 
edited by Jim Bernheimer
4.4 out of 5 stars   9 Reviews
Text-to-Speech: Enabled 

A treasure trove of little gems”

What a great way to introduce yourself to some talented new voices in your favorite genres – and all for just $2.99….


And while, you’re here, don’t miss the original Horror, Humor, and Heroes – just 99 cents for a limited time in the Kindle Store! 


Here’s the set-up:
Meet the New Faces of Fantasy –

Inside are thirteen stories handpicked to entertain, amuse, and provoke from the editor who brought you the original Horror, Humor, and Heroes. Follow the exploits of a young man bent on avenging his murdered brother on the eve of destruction. Visit a magical competition where no one can be trusted. Watch as reluctant heroes, such as a warrior faced with a cursed heritage and a high school graduate, whose summer job becomes much more than he imagined, grapple with their unfortunate circumstances.

Travel with a Russian polianitsa, obliged to escort a nobleman through dangerous lands. See a detective investigating persons who are missing for reasons that should never come to light. Interview the world’s first immortal. Quest through the eyes of a miniature dragon as he suffers the foolishness of his hairy and odorous companions.

This mix of traditional and urban fantasy will appeal to fans of both genres.


What the Reviewers Say
“If you are a fan of fantasy and urban fantasy you should find a lot here to interest you. Who knows you may even be reading a story by the next big fantasy/urban fantasy writer :-). Overall it is a solid and entertaining collection with a good variety. The majority of stories incorporate some irony or humor, so you way find yourself chuckling out loud at points.”
–K. Eckert, Top 1000 Reviewer

“Horror, Humor, and Heroes Volume 2, is just as good as the first one. Filled with short stories by several different authors, it most certainly makes for a good read. One of my favorite things about this book was getting to see the different writing styles between the authors. I’m sure there will be more great things to come.”
–Kayleigh


“I bought this with high hopes and it didn’t disappoint. Easily the best collection of short stories I’ve read in years, and provides a nice balance of epic and humor. With how cheap the kindle version is, I can’t imagine not buying something of this quality and I’m going to encourage everyone I know to buy a copy. All I can say now is that I can’t wait to see more work from any of these authors.”
–CWatt


About the Author
Jim Bernheimer is the author of the first Horror, Humor, and Heroes, Dead Eye: Pennies for the Ferryman, and Spirals of Destiny Book One: Rider. New Faces of Fantasy is his first time as an editor of an anthology.


Click here to download Horror, Humor, and Heroes Volume 2 – New Faces of Fantasy (or a free sample) to your Kindle, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry, Android-compatible, PC or Mac and start reading within 60 seconds!

UK CUSTOMERS: Click on the title below to download

Each day’s list is sponsored by one paid title. We encourage you to support our sponsors and thank you for considering them.
Authors, Publishers, iPad Accessory Manufacturers:
Interested in learning more about sponsorship? Just click on this link for more information.

Free Contemporary Titles in the Kindle Store 
HOW TO USE OUR NEW FREE BOOK TOOL:

Just use the slider at right of your screen below to scroll through a complete, updated list of free contemporary Kindle titles, and click on an icon like this one (at right) to read a free sample right here in your browser! Titles are sorted in reverse chronological order so you can easily see new freebies.

Letters to a Soldier
By: Julia Spencer-Fleming
Added: 02/18/2011 3:01:20am
The Guilt Free 3
By: Lisa Lillien
Added: 02/18/2011 3:01:17am
Countdown
By: Jonathan Maberry
Added: 02/18/2011 3:01:14am
Bond with Me
By: Anne Marsh
Added: 02/16/2011 3:01:15am
The President's Budget for Fiscal Year 2012
By: Office of Management and Budget
Added: 02/15/2011 4:01:27pm
Life From Scratch
By: Melissa Ford
Added: 02/15/2011 4:01:24pm
When Darkness Falls: Free eBook Part 2
By: James Grippando
Added: 02/15/2011 3:01:34am
When Darkness Falls: Free eBook Part 1
By: James Grippando
Added: 02/15/2011 3:01:31am
Without Reservations: With or Without, Book 1
By: J. L. Langley
Added: 02/15/2011 3:01:28am
Date with Destiny: Find the Love You Need
By: Rev Joseph W III Walker
Added: 02/14/2011 4:01:41pm
Sheet Music: Uncovering the Secrets of Sexual Intimacy in Marriage
By: Kevin Leman
Added: 02/14/2011 4:01:30pm
The Truth About Protecting Your IRAs and 401(k)s
By: Steve Weisman
Added: 02/14/2011 3:01:42am
Best Practices for Persuasive Presentations (Collection)
By: James O’Rourke
Added: 02/14/2011 3:01:38am
The Keynesian Endpoint
By: Tony Crescenzi
Added: 02/14/2011 3:01:35am
City of Dust: Illness, Arrogance, and 9/11
By: Anthony DePalma
Added: 02/14/2011 3:01:27am
Bridge To Happiness
By: Jill Barnett
Added: 02/13/2011 3:01:09am
Instant MBA
By: Nicholas Bate
Added: 02/11/2011 4:01:24pm
The Lazy Project Manager
By: Peter Taylor
Added: 02/11/2011 4:01:20pm
Sporting Wood
By: Cindy Spencer Pape
Added: 02/10/2011 3:01:42am
Second Sight Dating
By: Marianne Stephens
Added: 02/10/2011 3:01:39am
Saying Yes
By: Barbara Elsborg
Added: 02/10/2011 3:01:36am
Remembered Love
By: Diana Hunter
Added: 02/10/2011 3:01:33am
Most Unpopular Workday of the Year
By: Ashlyn Chase
Added: 02/10/2011 3:01:30am
How To Marry a Millionaire Vampire with Bonus Material
By: Kerrelyn Sparks
Added: 02/10/2011 3:01:26am
Emerald Green
By: Desiree Holt
Added: 02/10/2011 3:01:23am
Discovering Sofia
By: Mel Teshco
Added: 02/10/2011 3:01:20am
City of Sin
By: Rena Marks
Added: 02/10/2011 3:01:17am
Stockholm Seduction
By: Lily Harlem
Added: 02/10/2011 3:01:14am
Raising the Dead
By: Mara Purnhagen
Added: 02/08/2011 4:01:13pm
Admit One: My Life in Film
By: Emmett James
Added: 02/08/2011 3:01:39am
Blood Ransom
By: Lisa Harris
Added: 02/07/2011 4:01:31pm
Heart of Stone: A Novel
By: Jill Marie Landis
Added: 02/07/2011 4:01:21pm
After the Leaves Fall
By: Nicole Baart
Added: 02/07/2011 4:01:15pm
Delirious: Exclusive Bonus!
By: Daniel Palmer
Added: 02/05/2011 3:01:08am
Video Poker (A Free Game for Kindle)
By: Amazon Digital Services
Added: 02/04/2011 3:01:09am
Vanished
By: Kristi Holl
Added: 02/01/2011 4:01:18pm
I Love You This Much: A Song of God's Love
By: Sue Buchanan
Added: 02/01/2011 4:01:13pm
Wading Home
By: Rosalyn Story
Added: 02/01/2011 3:01:57am
Talk of the Town
By: Lisa Wingate
Added: 02/01/2011 3:01:48am
A Promise to Remember
By: Kathryn Cushman
Added: 02/01/2011 3:01:35am
Hara's Legacy: Resonance Mates, Book 1
By: Bianca D’Arc
Added: 02/01/2011 3:01:30am
Candle in the Darkness (Refiner's Fire, Book 1)
By: Lynn Austin
Added: 02/01/2011 3:01:25am
The Choice (Lancaster County Secrets, Book 1)
By: Suzanne Woods Fisher
Added: 02/01/2011 3:01:20am

The Third Crusade comes crashing into the 21st Century in our Kindle Nation eBook of the Day: Terrence O’Brien’s thriller The Templar Concordat – Just $2.99 on Kindle, and here’s a free sample!

It’s up to modern-day Templars Sean Callahan and Marie Curtis to keep the the infallible decrees of two Twelfth Century popes and three kings, stolen by the Hashashin, from threatening to catapult the bigotry, bias, and religious blood baths of the Third Crusade straight into the Twenty-First Century.

Here’s the set-up for Terrence O’Brien’s The Templar Concordat:

When the truth is your greatest danger, and the enemy knows the truth, things can only go downhill when the enemy finally gets the proof. And that’s the proof the Hashashin get when they steal what the Vatican doesn’t even know it has.


Now the infallible decrees of two Twelfth Century popes and three kings, stolen by the Hashashin, threaten to catapult the bigotry, bias, and religious blood baths of the Third Crusade straight into the Twenty-First Century.

Author Terrence O’Brien

When Templars Sean Callahan and Marie Curtis are drawn into the mess, they face an ancient enemy that has already nearly won the battle, a newly elected Mexican pope being undermined by entrenched Vatican powers, world class scholars who will sell their prestige to the highest bidder, and terrorists lingering over lattes in sidewalk cafes.


Moving from Rome to London, Switzerland, and Saudi Arabia, Callahan and Curtis are desperate to find some way to stem the success the Hashashin are having enlisting the majority of moderate Muslims in their Jihad.

Outmanuevered at each step by the Hashashin, only a last ditch roll of the dice has any chance of success. But it’s the only chance they have.

And here, in the comfort of your own browser, is your free sample:

IF YOU ARE READING THIS POST ON YOUR KINDLE, JUST ENTER 

http://bit.ly/Templar218 
INTO YOUR COMPUTER BROWSER TO READ YOUR FREE SAMPLE

Winter 2011 Kindle Nation Citizen Survey Results: Kindle’s "Extra" Features Continue to Have Wide Usage

(One of several Kindle Nation posts exploring the results of the Winter 2011 Kindle Nation Citizen Survey. Click here to see a breakdown of results.) 
 
 
By Tom Dulaney, Contributing Reporter

Jeff Bezos says the Kindle is and always will be, first and foremost, a dedicated ebook reader. And he’s right, of course.

 
But here at Kindle Nation we have been aware of the appeal of other features ever since our publisher Steve Windwalker hit the Kindle Store bestseller list back in January 2008 with the first “ebook” on how to use the Kindle for email. (The short piece later became part of the #1 bestselling book in the Kindle Store for the entire calendar year 2008.)


So, the Kindle may not be the ultimate convergence device, but readers do a lot more than buy and read ebooks on their Kindles. However, no other feature of the dedicated ebook reading tool compares to the book reading function in either usage or performance ratings.


The Kindle’s many other features find use and favor with scattered blocks of the 2,275 people who responded to the Winter 2011 Kindle Nation Citizen Survey. Taken, together they are certainly part of the package of features that makes the Kindle the most popular ebook reader ever, and the most popular product ever sold by Amazon.

Presented here, arranged in order of usage and appeal with most popular first, are other Kindle features and our survey respondents’ ratings of them.

The three most popular non-ebook pastimes — newspaper reading, blog reading, and Kindles games — each come in with 35% to 36% of respondents.


Just over a third of respondents—a fraction under 36%–rated the Kindle for newspaper reading, and 8% say its performance is “superior” while 28% call it “useful, even if flawed.”

About the same percentage — 35% of respondents — subscribe to blogs that they read on their Kindles. About half of these Kindle Nation citizens read blogs nearly every day.

How well does the Kindle do in delivering blogs? Some 12% rate it as “superior” as a blog reader, while 20% find it “useful even if flawed” for a total of 32%. 57% of respondents saying blog reading is not important to them, 5% saying it’s a distraction, and 6% unaware of the feature.

Playing word games or using other Kindle apps and utilities occupies about 35% of readers, with 11% saying the use of such features on the device is “superior” while 24% say it is “useful even if flawed.” But 65% don’t play games for these reasons: 6% said “I was not aware of this feature,” 14% find gaming an annoyance or distraction; and 45% say it is just not important to them.

And one of our favorite features—sending personal documents and manuscripts to the Kindle—is used by 26% of all respondents, with 2% doing so daily, 6% weekly and 18% “sometimes.”  About 21% said they were unaware of the feature, and 53% said they “rarely use” it.

Their ratings of the document reading feature: 25% find it useful even if flawed, and 9% rate the feature “superior.” About 53% said it was not important to them, 8% were unaware of the feature, and 5% found it a distraction.

The text-to-speech feature of the Kindle is used by a sizeable group of 25% of respondents, with 2% listening daily, 4% weekly and 19% “sometimes.” Two thirds—66%–say they use text-to-speech rarely. 8% call text-to-speech “superior” and 29% term it “useful if flawed.”

The Kindle gets significant use from owners checking email and browsing the web. In a question about usage, the survey combined email checking and web browsing. About 25% overall use the features, with 17% doing so “sometimes,” another 5% weekly, and 3% daily. And 56% said they rarely check email with their Kindles, while 19% were unaware that they could.

But that’s usage for email and web browsing. What about performance?

A second question broke out the Kindle’s two features: email and web browsing. For email, only 1% rate the Kindle “superior,” while 23% say it is “useful if flawed.”

As a web browser, only 2% rate the Kindle as “superior” as a web browser, and 28% call it “useful, if flawed.”

The survey combined two audio features to ask respondents how often they used their Kindles to listen to audiobooks and/or music. Some 12% listen to music or audiobooks on their Kindles, about half as many as text-to speech. About 1% listen daily, 3% listen weekly and 8 percent listen “sometimes.”

eBook Leaders Show Random House Sitting Pretty As Amazon’s Kindle Store Discounting Plays Crucial Role in Picking Winners

For the past few weeks, we’ve been paying more attention than usual to the USA Today bestseller lists that come out each Thursday because they have provided a fascinating window into the changes that are taking places in what we read and the publishing sources for the books that we are reasing.

Once again, the USA Today top 50 list for the week ended February 13, 2011 shows a healthy representation of titles for which the ebook format is the highest-selling format. There are 19 such titles this week and we provide a full list of those 19 titles below, with their list prices and Kindle Store prices as of today.

For each of the titles listed here, the first price shown is the publisher’s list price as reported by USA Today, and the second, linked price is the Kindle Store price. Wherever the publisher is a participant in the agency-model price-fixing scheme, the two prices will often be the same. For other books, Amazon may discount the book further for Kindle customers at its discretion.

While we are looking, a couple of other tidbits that caught our attention:

Among traditional publishers, Random House and its imprints are the place to be for authors these days. Random House is the leading traditional publisher in the U.S., and some may have been nervous for its authors when Random decided to abstain from the agency-model price-fixing scheme and, in the bargain, from the much-hyped Apple iBooks Store. But Random and its imprints and authors have benefited hugely from the price flexibility that Amazon and other retailers have been allowed, especially since the publisher and the authors get paid based on full list price even if a title is discounted below wholesale cost in the Kindle Store and elsewhere. Sixteen of the USA Today Top 50 are published by Random and its imprints, which is a dominant position given other changes in the composition of he bestseller lists. Given that Random has achieved that position without a single sale through the iBooks store, that dominance speaks eloquently of the utter failure of iBooks.

Meanwhile, Amazon and others should take very seriously the king-making role that results from the company’s selective discounting for Kindle titles. It seems very likely that a fabulous book-group natural like Elizabeth Stuckey-French’s novel The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady should be headed straight to the highest rungs of the Kindle Store bestseller list, especially after recent rave reviews in the New York Times, Denver Post, Boston Globe, and Kindle Nation Daily. The book is published by Random imprint Doubleday, which means that Amazon controls price and discounting in the Kindle Store just as brick-and-mortar booksellers control price and discounting for the hardcover edition. But with Amazon selling the Kindle edition for $13.90, Jeff Bezos and his minions might as well be standing at the gates of bestseller heaven blocking the entrance of one of the more distinctive, independent voices to come along in American fiction in recent years. It says here that as soon as Amazon brings the retail price of Revenge down to the $5-$10 promotional price sweet spot provided for Stieg Larsson, Sara Gruen, John Grisham and others, it will have another bestseller in the making.