Surveying E-Books

Easily-offended British writer Stephen Hunt released the results (PDF) of his "survey" of ebook users today, claiming that 71% of people are now using ebooks.

Of course, since his poll was entirely self-selected -- and, even more so, because it took place entirely on the Internet, as part of discussions about books and ebooks -- it's utterly unreliable as proof of anything in the wider world, as two seconds' thought would prove. All that this survey actually says is that people interested in the ebook question online tend to be already reading ebooks, which should be thoroughly uncontroversial and non-newsworthy.

His comments -- claiming that ebooks will soon "top out at over 90% or market size in the near future," among others -- further prove that he has no idea what he's talking about, and that he hasn't been listening when his editors and agents have described his own book sales to him.

But, if you wanted actual numbers, you were also in luck today: Pew Research Center did a real survey (randomized and everything) of US consumers, finding that 12% of respondents owned an ebook reader (up from 6% in November). Tablet computers (such as iPads) were owned by 8% of respondents (up from 5%).

Once again: ebooks are a strongly growing market, and some categories (particularly the most mass-market categories, like romances and thrillers) have seen immense growth. But physical books are still roughly 50% of the sales of even those most e-driven categories, and consumer books will not tip over to primarily e-books until readers and tablets are much more ubiquitous than a total 17% of the potential market. (Some professional categories, and many reference works, are nearly all-digital now, but those are database businesses, and very different from the impulse-driven consumer market.)

Let me say that again: only 17% of the US population owns an e-reader or a tablet. (And only about a third of the population has a smartphone, the other potential e-reading device -- note that tablet/e-reader owners are highly likely to have smartphones as well, so those numbers are not additive.) The growth curve of e-books is going to slow down, before too long, and paper books will not go away.

And, more importantly, it is entirely possible for something new to come along and not destroy existing media -- more than possible, it's common. After all, Broadway -- that most old-fashioned of all of our entertainment media -- had a possibly-record year in 2010, bringing in $1.037 billion in sales.

The sky is not falling, and thinking that it is blinds you to the actual opportunities and threats that really exist.