Books, eBooks and the Reading Public

Ever wonder who buys books and why? 

Well, if you have, there is a nifty service out there that tracks that kind of info.  The service, PubTrack, does online surveys of the book buying public.  And the results for 2007 were reported last week by Publishers Weekly.

Much to Henri's amusement, I am a person who is fascinated with statistics like these.  And yes, I know about "Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics."  I guess it is the accountant buried in my soul that loves to quantify things.

I love the fact that fourteen billion dollars was spent on books!  It is interesting that only 3.2 billion (23%) was spent online. And I (for one) am less than thrilled to find out that only 3% of book purchases were non print (eBook and Audio Book) versions. 

PubTrack breaks the reading public into five groups:  Teens (13-17), Gen Y (18-28), Gen X (29-40), Boomers (41-59) and Matures (60 and up).  The statistics are then broken up to reflect buying habits and attitudes.  Each group has some noteworthy feature:

• Only 9% of Teens actually buy books and when they do they primarily read fiction.
• Gen Y consumers buy only 14% of the books sold but they buy about 1/3 of all those books online and are the biggest group (4%) of non print book buyers.
• Gen X is interesting in the fact that there is nothing unusual or particularly interesting about them and that they closely mimic the statistics of the matures.
• Boomers are the largest segment of the population (33%) and spend the most money on books. 
• Matures read the most fiction of any group -- 56% and purchase very little online. 

Mildly interesting stuff. But as I looked over the stats I begin to wonder about trends, since these age groups are a moving target.  So just for fun I took a look at what happened when you combined the stats for Teens and Gen Y or what happens when you combine Boomers and Matures.  Probably only interesting to me. . .

Except that the trends when you combine Teens and Gen Y are probably a  peak into the future.  Like everyone in publishing, I have a great curiosity about what is going to happen.

When you reduce all the statistics to some simple percentages the picture becomes pretty clear. 

	Teens +GenY	GenX	Boomers	Mature
Population	25%	21%	33%	21%
# of books buyers	29%	24%	23%	24%
# of books purchased	18%	22%	32%	28%
$$ spent	24%	24%	30%	22%
% purchased online	49%	26%	22%	14%
% non-print	6%	3%	3%	2%

 

I'll save your eyes and point out the really clear points about the combination of Teens and Gen Y:

• They purchase only 18% of books
• 49% of those books are purchased online
• 6% of books bought are non-print version

Obviously, the future of printed books and they way they are bought is changing and will continue to change as the matures die out and are replaced with teens.  This is a pretty grim picture if you are a traditional publisher or one of the big three book retailers.  But if you are Jeff Bezos or an Amazon shareholder you probably feel pretty good about yourself.

 

Just one more piece in the growing evidence that publishers are going to have to change or perish.

del.icio.us Tags: books,ebooks,digial reading,publishing industry,the future