Ebooks in Oz: the stats
In January 2012, Bowker Market Research conducted
a survey addressing the emerging ebook market in Australia and nine other countries, including the US, UK, India, Brazil and Japan. We share some of the Australian results below.
Almost half of all online adults in Australia have experimented with ebooks, according to the findings of Bowker Market Research’s Global eBook Monitor. The survey of 1000 adults, designed and weighted to be representative of the adult population in Australia, was conducted online, so effectively represents the population with internet access.
The survey found that 43% of respondents had downloaded an ebook or an extract of an ebook, either free or paid, in the previous six months. Of these, nearly one third had downloaded a free ebook and over one fifth had paid for an ebook.
The take-up was highest among 18- to 24-year-olds, and then decreased with age: 24% of respondents aged 18-24 had bought an ebook, compared to 14% of those aged 55 and up. The survey also found that the heavier the print book buyer, the more likely they were to have downloaded an ebook.
When asked to predict their future downloading behaviour, 20% of respondents said they had bought an ebook in the past six months and were likely to do so again in the next six months. A further 15% said they had not yet bought an ebook but were likely to in the next six months.
‘We expect, conservatively, that just under a quarter of the Australian population will purchase an ebook in the next six months, and there’s a real possibility of much steeper growth,’ says Jo Henry, director of Bowker Market Research. ‘One third of the entire online population could be purchasing an ebook within six months.’
What’s selling, and why?
Adult fiction was the most commonly downloaded genre. Nearly 70% percent of buyers had bought at least one adult fiction ebook, with 3.5 ebooks bought on average, compared to 50%/1.3 for adult nonfiction, 39%/1.4 for each of professional and academic, and 31%/1.2 for children’s.
Overall, adult fiction accounted for around 40% of downloads of both paid and free ebooks, while the other genres each accounted for under 20%, with children’s fiction the least downloaded.
Looking ahead to the next six months, adult fiction remains the most popular choice for prospective ebook buyers, followed by children’s books (which showed the greatest increase) and adult nonfiction.
Respondents were also asked which factors were most likely to encourage them to buy ebooks. No individual factors stood out for more than 23% of respondents. Some of the more popular reasons were: cheaper than paperbacks, takes less space than printed books at home, easier to carry around than a lot of printed books, and easy to download.
Similarly, no factor discouraging purchase was mentioned by more than 23%. Some of the common complaints were: prefer reading printed books, spend too long looking at a screen already, don’t like reading from a screen, like owning printed books, and less suitable as gifts.
The good news for publishers is that the purchase of ebooks has had less of an effect on the purchase of print books than perhaps might have been expected. Over half of ebook users said their spending on print books had not really changed, with less than a third saying it had decreased or stopped altogether. That said, the more ebooks respondents had bought, the more likely they were to have decreased or stopped spending on print books.
Devices and purchase points
The great majority of respondents had regular and convenient access to desktop or laptop computers, while 59% mentioned access to smartphones, 23% to tablets and 10% to ereaders.
Of the respondents already downloading ebooks, 40% used their desktop or laptop computer the most to read ebooks, compared to 18% iPad, 12% iPhone, eight percent other android smartphone and eight percent Kindle. The more ebooks people had bought, however, the more likely they were to use an iPhone or Kindle.
Unsurprisingly, Amazon was the most popular source for ebooks, but its competitors certainly aren’t out of the running. For 35% of ebook buyers Amazon was the main source of purchase, compared to 23% for Apple, 13% for direct seller websites and other ebookstores (including online-only bookstores), 10% for publishers’ websites, and eight percent each for the websites of independent bookshops and chain bookshops (Borders, Angus & Robertson, Dymocks and Collins).
While Amazon led regardless of the number of ebooks bought, heavy buyers showed a greater preference for publishers’ websites (20%) and light buyers for Apple (27%).
The results were a little different when it came to tablet and smartphone users; nearly a quarter of those who use a tablet or smartphone the most to read ebooks usually purchased their ebooks through Apple Books or Apple iTunes, compared to 16% through Amazon.
The Global eBook Monitor 10 Country Comparison Report is available free of charge. Individual country reports are available for purchase, and for a limited time, the 2012 Australia Global eBook Monitor Report will be available to Bookseller+Publisher subscribers at a 15% discount. For more information contact Rachel Levin at rachel@bookmarketing.co.uk.
A note on the study
The Global eBook Monitor was undertaken in January 2012 by Bowker Market Research in association with Pearson, Tata Consultancy Services, ATKearney, BISG and Frankfurter Buchmesse.
The survey was carried out in 10 countries: Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, India, Japan, South Korea, Spain, the UK and the US.
In each country, the sample of 1000 adults was designed and weighted to be representative of the adult (age 18+) population in terms of age, sex and region. The survey was, however, conducted online, so that the samples effectively represent the populations with internet access in each country.
This article does not provide a comprehensive overview of the 2012 Australia Global eBook Monitor Report. Other issues covered in the report include the profile and penetration of ebook buyers past and future; attitudes to ebook pricing; future device buying; and more.
Category: Features
