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Survey Results on Kindle Owner Demographics: 57-43 Tilt Toward Women, 59% Aged 55 and Older, Growing International Base

February 18, 2010 by Steve Windwalker

By Stephen Windwalker
Originally posted February 18, 2010 – © Kindle Nation Daily 2010

Kindle owners — especially those who read a lot on their Kindles — skew older and more female than many gadgets, but there are also a lot of kids reading ebooks on those same Kindles.

More from the 1,892 individuals who responded to the Winter 2010 Kindle Nation Citizen Survey February 6-13:

55.9% identified themselves as female, and 42% as male, which suggests that for 2.1% gender information is handled on a “need to know” basis
Less than 0.5% are under 25, compared with 38.7% aged 25-54 and 59% aged 55 or older
Just over 4% said they were not U.S. residents, a significant number which of course reflects the growth of the international Kindle in recent months
Among the 412 respondents who became Kindle owners since December 2009, twice as many (8.2%) said they were not U.S. residents

So, it’s no surprise that Kindle owners, and Kindle Nation citizens in particular, skew toward mature women. Although it is common to think of men, and of younger people, as being more likely to own gadgets, we have been saying all alone that the Kindle is a special kind of gadget, purpose-built for readers rather than gadget heads.

I suspect that the gender and age breakdown in terms of actual ownership of a Kindle may be spread more evenly, but there is a difference between Kindle ownership and active or voracious reading of Kindle content. Regardless of gender or age, the people most likely to read Kindle Nation Daily posts and to be socially engaged enough in the process to participate in our survey are probably more likely to active and voracious readers of Kindle content than the broader population of Kindle owners, some small number of whom may have cut way back on their Kindle use since making an initial novelty purchase.

None of this is intended to undercut the significance of the views expressed by Kindle Nation citizens in the survey, but it does seem fair to suggest more or less hypothetically that if, say, the gender breakdown among all who purchase and own a Kindle is roughly 50-50, I should not be the least bit surprised if the statistical breakdown of gender for anyone buying a Kindle book, or for those reading this post or any of our Kindle nation Daily Free Book Alerts, is more along the lines of 57-43 favoring women.

And mature women at that.

At first it may seem like contradictory information, in light of the age breakdown noted above, that 5 of the top 57 bestsellers in the Kindle Store right now are the titles included in popular tweener author Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, which among other things happens to by my 11-year-old son Danny’s favorite fiction series. Given that none of the 5 titles is currently free, this really means that the 5 titles are all among the top 20 non-free titles in the Kindle Store, which amounts to bestseller list hegemony similar to that experienced by vampire-fiction novelist Stephanie Meyer back in 2008-2009.

But rather than being a contradiction, it points us to an interesting new trend in the way people are using their Kindles:

The Kindle is gradually becoming more and more of a family, or household, reading platform.

A 12-year-old may be reading the latest Percy Jackson saga before or after school, then turning the Kindle over to his Mom when she gets home so she can finish reading the latest from Elizabeth Gilbert or Kristin Hannah. If both parties happen to have overlapping time available for reading, there’s always the possibility of switching to reading on another device with the Kindle for iPhone/iPod Touch/PC/Blackberry Apps. Occasionally, of course, multiple members of the same household or Kindle-sharing group will read the same books, newspapers, magazines, or blogs, and save on the price just as they would with a print edition. And all of this will work in just about any household regardless of how you define “family.”

Click here to see complete, detailed results of the survey, and keep your dial tuned to Kindle Nation Daily — here on the web or here to have posts pushed directly to your Kindle — for ongoing breakdowns of the significance of the survey results.

Additional Survey Results, coming soon:

What If Big Six Market Share Leader Random House Breaks Ranks with the Apple Five? Likely Kindle Owner Buying Behavior at Strategic Price Points
Kindle Features: Past, Present, and Possible
Prospects for Competition and Co-existence Among the Kindle, iPad, and Other Devices
Kindle Owner Demographics
How Many Devices in a Kindle Household?
Bezos’ Nightmare: 20-20 Hindsight on Amazon’s 2003 Decision to Begin Development of the Kindle

What If Big Six Market Share Leader Random House Breaks Ranks with the Apple Five?

February 16, 2010 by Steve Windwalker

By Stephen Windwalker
Originally posted February 16, 2010 – © Kindle Nation Daily 2010

“The sense of entitlement of the American consumer is absolutely astonishing,” said novelist Douglas Preston in a direct reference to Kindle owners in the New York Times last week, but Preston’s equally astonishing notion that we in Kindle Nation are governed by “the Wal-Mart mentality” misses the mark by plenty.

Much of the reporting about the ebook pricing controversy has strongly suggested that Steve Jobs and the Apple Five (thanks to The Kindle Chronicles podcaster Len Edgerly for this currently apt label for MacMillan, Hachette, Penguin, Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins) will have their way and impose 30% to 50% price increases on Kindle Store bestsellers and new releases by the end of March, so it should not be surprising if Kindle owners’ backs are up.

It’s true that a majority of respondents in the Winter 2010 Kindle Nation Citizen Survey is ready to take a stand against anticipated increases in Kindle Store ebook prices above the $9.99 figure that Amazon has associated with bestsellers and new releases since the Kindle’s launch over two years ago, but inside the numbers are some indications of flexibility:

54% disagreed somewhat or strongly with the statement “I will probably pay $10 to $14.99 for new ebook titles if necessary,” but a significant number (37%) agreed with the statement and another 52% disagreed with the statement that “I will never pay more than $9.99 for an ebook.”
Given further choices, 75% agreed with the statement “I’ll pay over $9.99, but only rarely when I simply must have an ebook,” and 33% said they would pay more for professional or technical books.

With this range of views, there may be significant numbers of Kindle owners who occasionally pay more than $9.99, and indeed there have been many Kindle books that have sold briskly with double-digit prices during the past two years. Kindle owners are by their very nature likely to be too fair-minded and attuned to subtleties to participate in a totally unified boycott based on price or any other single, simple factor.

While it will be fascinating both to me and, perhaps, to the U.S. Department of Justice to study the array of ebook prices in the Kindle Store and in other venues like Apple’s yet-to-be-opened iBooks store on April Fool’s Day, it may be more telling to see where they settle out on May Day, Independence Day, or Thanksgiving Day. In the interim, competition may have its effects in more traditional ways than we have seen so far, and the behavior of Random House, the largest of the Big Six in U.S. operations, may ultimately say the most about how this drama shakes out. As reported here earlier, a key Random House senior executive indicated to a confab of booksellers a few days ago that her company could pursue an independent course on ebook pricing instead of trying to impose its own retail pricing wisdom on a company — Amazon — that knows more about price elasticity and its own customers than anyone else in the world.

Kindle owners now say in large numbers (73%) that they have become more price-conscious as a result of the recent price controversy, and an overwhelming 87% in our survey disagreed with the rather broad statement that “publishers know their costs, so I’m happy to pay the prices they set.” If Amazon’s temporary deletion of MacMillan titles was intended to send an implicit message about the extent to which key players should be viewed as benign or malignant, it worked: a remarkable 68% of our respondents agreed with the statement that “Jeff Bezos and Amazon have my back, and I know they price things to sell.”

Some may think this perspective is an indication that Kindle owners are bellying up to the Bezos Family Kool-Aid Stand in large numbers, but given the significant and growing role that ebook readers will continue to play in the retail book business, publishers who fail to pay close attention may be risking more than they can afford to risk.

One Kindle Nation citizen commented, on an earlier post here, that “some anti-publisher bias is understandable” in the survey results, give the “kindle specific audience” of Kindle Nation Daily, but the comment itself is commentary on the extent to which important things have changed. The book publishing industry is not Big Oil, Big Pharma, or the Wall Street Bonus Bankers. Not all that long ago it was widely seen by the American reading public as being composed of venerable houses and imprints that were well-deserving of the roles we granted them as gatekeepers and arbiters of taste and quality. The idea that large numbers of voracious readers hold something like an anti-publisher bias represents a stunning fall from grace.

If Random House breaks ranks with the Apple Five, it could do itself and its authors a tremendous amount of good, and a return to more traditional competitive behavior could soon follow. In the long run, or that middle run before we are all dead, we as the increasingly savvy, quality-conscious, price-conscious citizens of Kindle Nation could find ourselves holding more of the cards than we thought we might be holding.

Click Here to View Likely Kindle Owner Buying Behavior at Strategic Price Points

Additional Survey Results, coming soon:

What If Big Six Market Share Leader Random House Breaks Ranks with the Apple Five? Likely Kindle Owner Buying Behavior at Strategic Price Points
Kindle Features: Past, Present, and Possible
Prospects for Competition and Co-existence Among the Kindle, iPad, and Other Devices
Kindle Owner Demographics
How Many Devices in a Kindle Household?
Bezos’ Nightmare: 20-20 Hindsight on Amazon’s 2003 Decision to Begin Development of the Kindle

With Some Worrisome Signs for Traditional Book Publishers, Record Turnout of Kindle Nation Citizens Votes Loud and Clear to Continue the Kindle Revolution

February 16, 2010 by Steve Windwalker

By Stephen Windwalker
Originally posted February 16, 2010 – © Kindle Nation Daily 2010

You can’t fool all of the readers all of the time.

If the Big Six traditional print-book publishers thought they could snooker readers into turning their backs on ebooks and going back to a book business built around exorbitantly priced hardcover bestsellers, here’s a news flash:

The polls have closed, the results have been counted, and a record turnout of Kindle Nation citizens have voted to continue the Kindle Revolution!

Among the key take-aways from the 1,892 individuals who responded February 6-13 to the Winter 2010 Kindle Nation Citizen Survey:

Kindle owners are voracious readers who have already made dramatic changes in their book buying behavior. 64% now buy at least 15 Kindle Store ebooks a year (and that does not include free titles), and over half of those respondents buy at least 30 Kindle Store ebooks a year. While 61 percent used to buy 15 or more new print books a year (from Amazon or physical booksellers) before acquiring a Kindle, that number has declined to just 15% today.
Kindle owners are poised to make further changes in book-buying and reading behavior, some of which could have grim consequences for traditional print publishers. 73% say that they have “become more price-conscious” as a result of the “recent ebook price wars, 60% say that higher bestseller prices would lead them to “buy more backlist or indie titles,” and 48% say they’ll “look to buy ebooks by authors who provide Kindle exclusives.”
That willingness of Kindle owners to look beyond bestsellers for interesting, affordable reading content may signal a declining acceptance of the traditional “gatekeeper” role of the major publishers. The respondents’ ratio of positive-to-negative views of the Big Six publishers was 18% positive to 35% negative, compared to 46% positive to 3% negative for small independent publishers, 86% positive to 1% negative for Amazon itself, and 44% positive to 20% negative for soon to be fledgling ebook seller Apple.
Recent controversies over book pricing have apparently helped Kindle owners become more educated and/or opinionated about key players’ roles and tactics. Only 6 of 1,892 respondents said they had “never heard of” the Big Six publishers, 60% agreed strongly or somewhat with the statement that “publishers & Apple should be investigated for price-fixing collusion,” and 93% agreed strongly or somewhat with the statement that “hardcovers are overpriced and ebooks should be much cheaper.”
But the survey indicates that publishers may have been wise to keep their recent pricing-related communications “in-house” and let authors speak directly to readers through online forums and other venues, since a 57% positive to 3% negative ratio in Kindle owners’ views of bestselling authors suggests far greater credibility, at least for now, than that suggested in the aforementioned 18%-to-35% ratio for the Big Six.

Additional Survey Results, coming soon:

What If Big Six Market Share Leader Random House Breaks Ranks with the Apple Five?
Kindle Features: Past, Present, and Possible
Prospects for Competition and Co-existence Among the Kindle, iPad, and Other Devices
Kindle Owner Demographics
How Many Devices in a Kindle Household?
Bezos’ Nightmare: 20-20 Hindsight on Amazon’s 2003 Decision to Begin Development of the Kindle

Last Chance to Participate in Kindle Nation’s Most Important Survey Ever

February 13, 2010 by Steve Windwalker

Well over 1500 citizens of Kindle Nation have already participated in our latest Kindle Nation Citizen Survey, and it is already clear that it this survey is helping to provide important information to Amazon, authors and publishers, and industry observers on the current controversies and competition involving ebook prices and devices and your experiences and views as a reader.

But we can’t keep the survey open forever, so I thought I would send out this heads up to let you know that you have until midnight Saturday night, February 13 to participate. The more participants, the more influence Kindle owners will have on these critical issues that affect us all as readers.

I’ve limited this survey to 10 questions, but I hope you will also feel free to use the comment areas following questions 1-5 to say whatever needs saying. Future Kindle Nation Daily posts will provide detailed reports on your responses, but your confidentiality and privacy will always remain well-guarded. (If you’d prefer to have your name included with your comments, please indicate this specifically in the body of your comment.)

Last Chance:
Click Here to Take the
Winter 2010 Kindle Nation Survey

Please note: Two notes about tiny glitches in the survey:

The “comments” area only appears on survey questions 1-5. Please feel free to email any additional comments to kindlenation@gmail.com.

Please ignore the “Most likely” column at the far right-hand of survey questions 8 and 10.

Sincerely,

Stephen Windwalker
Kindle Nation Daily

Collins Stewart Hosts Your Humble Reporter in Conference Call on The Kindle Revolution: Recent Trends in the eBooks Market

February 7, 2010 by Steve Windwalker

By Stephen Windwalker
Originally posted February 7, 2010 at Kindle Nation Daily – © Kindle Nation Daily 2010

Tomorrow morning, at 11:30 am EST Monday February 8, I have been invited by the independent financial advisory group Collins Stewart to be its guest speaker on a conference call to discuss Recent Trends in the eBooks Market, and interested citizens of Kindle Nation are invited to listen in along with a wide array of institutional investors, business news media, and company representatives. Here’s a link to the Collins Stewart news feed on the conference call.

Here are the topics that have been suggested to me by Collins Stewart senior analyst Sandeep Aggarwal, who will host the call:

1. How big can be the eBook market in the next 2-3 years i.e. can eBook achieve 25% penetration in next 3 years?
2. What are some examples of buyers’ behavior for eBooks that are encouraging and/or unique?
3. Are publishers excited or threatened by the traction of eBooks?
4. Which eBook readers are likely to win? Is iPad a compelling threat to Kindle?
5. Which eBook publishing platforms are likely to win and why?
6. How do the economics for publishers’ vary on Kindle vs. traditional book sales at Amazon.com?
7. Where do you think the economics for publishers are heading in next couple of years?

I’ll also be sharing some fascinating early returns from the Winter 2010 Kindle Nation Citizen Survey, which has had over 1,000 respondents since it went live at 1:30 pm yesterday.

If you would like to listen in, just dial in a moment or two before the call, which is supposed to run at most from 11:30 am EST to 12:30 pm EST:

Toll-Free: 800-446-1671
International Access: 847-413-3362
Confirmation Number 26349150

There will also be a Replay available for the next two months, and I will share that number here later if I make it through the call without excessive stuttering or other embarrassment.

Make Your Voice Heard: Take the Winter 2010 Kindle Nation Citizen Survey

February 6, 2010 by Steve Windwalker

With the current controversies and competition involving ebook prices and devices, your experiences and views as a reader are of great interest to other readers and to authors, publishers, booksellers, journalists, investors and those who follow what is going on in the book business. In our last two surveys (April 2009 and October 2009), we’ve had extremely high levels of participation and attracted the interest of all the primary players.

With your participation in the current survey, we hope to help Amazon, authors and publishers, and others see more clearly than ever what’s important to readers as we enter a new decade. I’ve limited this survey to 10 questions, but I hope you will also feel free to use the comment areas to say whatever needs saying. Future Kindle Nation Daily posts will provide detailed reports on your responses, but your confidentiality and privacy will always remain well-guarded. (If you’d prefer to have your name included with your comments, please indicate this specifically in the body of your comment.)

Two notes about tiny glitches in the survey:

The “comments” area only appears on survey questions 1-5. Please feel free to email any additional comments to kindlenation@gmail.com.
Please ignore the “Most likely” column at the far right-hand of survey questions 8 and 10.

Thanks for your cooperation!

Take the Winter 2010 Kindle Nation Survey

Why should I provide my email address?

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Survey Results on Kindle Owner Demographics: 57-43 Tilt Toward Women, 59% Aged 55 and Older, Growing International Base

What If Big Six Market Share Leader Random House Breaks Ranks with the Apple Five?

With Some Worrisome Signs for Traditional Book Publishers, Record Turnout of Kindle Nation Citizens Votes Loud and Clear to Continue the Kindle Revolution

Last Chance to Participate in Kindle Nation’s Most Important Survey Ever

Collins Stewart Hosts Your Humble Reporter in Conference Call on The Kindle Revolution: Recent Trends in the eBooks Market

Make Your Voice Heard: Take the Winter 2010 Kindle Nation Citizen Survey

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