By Stephen Windwalker

• Originally posted February 3, 2010 at Kindle Nation Daily – © Kindle Nation Daily 2010

One might assume, given the apparent commitment that the BS Cabal (Apple and the Big Six publishers) is making to anti-consumer collusive price-gouging for ebooks, that their strategy is at least supported by a bit of market research. Apparently one would be wrong. Those publishers are real cowboys, and they’ve drawn their guns, so they might as well shoot someone, or something, somewhere, sometime. Even if it’s their own feet!

Simba Information, which bills itself as “The Market Intelligence Leader for the Media and Publishing Industries,” recently completed a survey of Kindle owners’ book-buying behavior and has been good enough to share a preliminary report exclusively with Kindle Nation Daily. Although Simba did not survey a huge sample, these results are especially interesting in the context of the current battles and controversies swirling around ebook pricing. Special thanks to Michael Norris, Senior Analyst with Simba’s Trade Books Group, for sharing this information.

• 43% of Kindle owners have 100 books or more on their Kindles. Just 11% have nine titles or fewer, and most of that group have only had their Kindles a few months. Unsurprisingly the ones who have had their Kindles the longest are the most likely to have large numbers of books on their devices, and are also slightly more likely to have owned a first generation Kindle
• Prior book consumption habits are mixed: one in five Kindle owners didn’t buy any hardcover titles at all in the year prior to acquiring their Kindle, but about 23% bought 10 or more hardcovers, and 60% bought 10 or more paperbacks, showing a large commitment to reading (most adult book buyers buy fewer than 5 books of any format)
• 9.4% of Kindle owners are on their second Kindle, and half of Kindle owners never read e-books before getting their Kindle
• One in four Kindle owners got their Kindle as a gift, and 62% bought it without ever seeing another Kindle owner using it first, showing how effective Amazon is in making the device a ‘gift for readers.’
• The most popular activity Kindles are used for is reading books, with 87.7% of respondents indicating they read books on the Kindle ‘very often.’ The least popular activity Kindles are used is reading magazines (57.9% say they never have read a magazine on their Kindle) and reading newspapers, with 58.8% saying they’ve never read a newspaper on their Kindle. Given that the surveyed Kindle owners are mostly very happy with the reading experience (more on this in a moment) these statistics don’t bode particularly well for the upcoming ‘tablet’ devices that may enter the market for the purposes of reading magazine and newspaper content. As far as blogs are concerned, though, 28.4% of Kindle users ‘often’ or ‘very often’ use their Kindles to read blogs, but 32.8% never do.
• The most popular place Kindles are used are in the home (78.8% indicate that’s where they use their Kindles the most frequently).
• Kindle owners surveyed are very happy with their devices. 59.1% strongly agree with the statement ‘The Kindle is a great value for the money’ and 51.8% strongly agree with the statement that they ‘expect to replace their Kindles with another Kindle someday.’
• 32.6% strongly agree with the statement ‘print books are overpriced’ and 42.0% somewhat agree. Fewer agree that e-books are overpriced (10.2% strongly agree and 24.8% somewhat agreeing).  54.3% of Kindle owners strongly agree with the statement ‘I always look for the free e-books when browsing’ and 64.5% strongly disagree with the statement: ‘I buy more print books now that I have a Kindle’