Print Book Readers Holding Strong

A recent survey shows print readers are still pretty attached to paper books and advises publishers to retain as much retail space as they can to avoid losing print readers altogether.

Codex Group's "Book Publishing Digital Transition Report: 1st Quarter 2011" surveyed more than 9,000 book buyers in February.

It found that many more people now have some sort of e-reader.
However, the percentage of people who say they read only ebooks was below 1 percent. By contrast, 40 percent of readers say they read only print books.

Peter Hildick-Smith, president of Codex, expects the number of people who read ebooks to rise while the number of people who say they only read treebooks declines.

More than one-third of those surveyed say they read both print and digital books. A quarter of the people who only read print book are thinking about trying an e-reader.

The report concludes that the high number of readers who want to read only print books - combined with those who read both ebooks and treebooks - demonstrates how critical it is for booksellers to preserve as much retail space as possible in order to avoid losing print readers altogether.

Codex predicts that 43 percent of book buyers will own an e-reading device by the end of the year. However, it also found little indication that consumers plan to stop buying and reading print books.

Makes sense to me. I'm one of those folks who has a Kindle and enjoys reading on it. However, I'm still loving my treebooks as well. I get that familiar thrill when I buy a real book from a favorite author. I have no plans to stop.

Just like I plan to keep reading on my Kindle. I'm even toying with asking for a Nook on my next birthday. I'm a lover of books and I love them in all forms.