Who wants a dedicated ereader? Not a lot of people. Not yet, anyway. But there are three groups, maybe four, that are hot for the Amazon Kindle, the Sony Reader, and the other wannabe contenders.
We've talked to scores of people in our studies, and we aren't yet seeing much demand for dedicated ereaders. People almost always like the ereaders better after they've tried them, but not enough to actually want to buy one.
It's a frustrating paradox for those who want to sell the ereaders. Here's what we found out.
- People who don't read much don't want one because the initial cost is too high.
- But people who love books don't want one either because, well, because they love books. They like buying them. They like holding them. They like their covers. They like that each one comes in a specially chosen font, and has a particular heft, and that when they are done with it, the book sits on the shelf to catch their eye at odd moments. It's a physical thing.
We found three groups who are keen to buy ereaders, with a possible fourth bonus group:
- People who like large print. That includes the small number of people who seek out large print books already, and the much larger group who consider themselves normally sighted by can read faster and easier with larger font sizes.
- Ultra-readers who read five books a week or more.
- Gadget hawks, the early adopters who like new technology because it's new.
- And the bonus group? People who like to buy gadgets as gifts. Many who wouldn't consider buying one for themselves, think it would be a good gift for a young person because all young people like gadgets; or for an elderly relative because they need large print books. Gift giving may be an important channel for ereaders in these early years.
We also found a group that seems to be the most resistant to ereaders: people who skim and flip. These are people who skim through books very quickly until they realise there's something they've missed, and then flip back through the pages to investigate. The ereaders fail them on both counts, with too little information per page to make skimming effective, and too slow for flipping when they need to backfill. One skimmer said: "It's like trying to swim lengths in a bathtub."
Is there hope for ereaders? Yes -- but it's not going to be a quick win for the Kindle and its ilk. They have to remember that though there is a small audience ready for their product, the mass audience needs to be wooed. They need low initial prices, wide selections of competitively priced books, and low hassle. They might also want to consider whether the aesthetic properties of books, allowing for more fonts, better pictures, liberal DRM, and even making it cheap and easy to buy the physical book if you loved the ebook.
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