Two weeks ago we released an audio and eBook survey and asked you to tell us about your e-reading habits. We had 100 respondents, not enough to make any conclusions, but here are some of the patterns that emerged.
First of all, of the people who responded, 58% live in the Caribbean, 34% are immigrants or first-generation in their homeland, and 8% had no familial connection to the Caribbean. Most of the respondents were between the ages of 36 and 64 years old. We divided the results among these groups, just to keep things interesting.
For the question on the purchase of eBooks, 62% of Caribbean residents reported that they had not purchased an eBook this year. However, very few Caribbean resident respondents had purchased just one eBook which suggests that once they tried eBooks they got hooked and bought more.
The buying pattern was flipped for non-Caribbean respondents: 62% of this group had purchased between one and five eBooks.
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Overwhelmingly, the main reason people reported for not buying or reading eBooks is that they don’t like reading on a device. This was 48% for Caribbean residents and 54% for Caribbean immigrants. The preference for print is supported by many studies. This graph from the Pew Research Center shows that in 2019, 25% of adults in the US reported reading an eBook as against 65% of adults who had read a print book. All of the studies we found were from 2019 and anecdotal evidence suggests that the pandemic may have changed some readers’ habits. In our survey, those who live in the Caribbean remained most hesitant, with 60% saying they were more likely to read an eBook since the onslaught of the pandemic, as against 81% of Caribbean citizens living abroad, and 100% of those with no ties to the Caribbean. Price was the next most significant barrier to eBook purchase. Across the board, our respondents were not very enthusiastic about audio books. |
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If you are interested in learning more about the survey results, or would like to add your voice to the conversation, take the poll or leave a comment below.