40-Something Women are Power Ebook buyers

A new report finds that 40-something women are a big force in ebook buying.

According to the Book Industry Study Group,  today’s ebook power buyer is a 44-year-old lover of romance who buys at least one ebook a week and who is spending more on books today than she has in the past. She's also using an e-reader like a Kindle instead of reading on her computer.

The report identifies "power buyers" as representing about 18 percent of the total people buying ebooks today, but they buy 61 percent of all ebooks purchased.

The Consumer Attitudes Toward E-Book Reading survey also finds that women make up 66 percent of all power ebook  buyers. In 2009, they were only 49 percent of the ebook market.

Also, the majority of ebooks sold are fiction: 20 percent of them are romance. Literary fiction and science fiction each have a 20 percent share of the market as well.

The most  influential factors leading to an ebook purchase come as no surprise to me - free samples and low prices go a long way toward driving sales.

UPDATE: I''ve taken the plunge and developed an author website that I actually have to pay for! I hope you'll start visiting me there; that's where I'll be blogging from now on! Come along and have a look! Click here.