Comments on: Kindle users skew older; does that impact news biz’s revenue hopes?

By: How Green Am I, Really? | readingthroughcollege

How Green Am I, Really? | readingthroughcollege — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 02:35:24 +0000

[...] want to lug a hardcover book around. (Or seniors with arthritis.) Apparently, this impression is accurate. As far as I can tell, no extremely reliable surveys on the age of Kindle users have been released [...]

By: EVENT REMINDER: Electronic Books Seminar July 22, 2010 $ « The Literary World of Sylvia Hubbard

Mon, 05 Jul 2010 20:03:53 +0000

[...] LibraryJournal.com: a Publisher’s Lunch study indicates that the Kindle Reader demographic skews upwards, with 70% of users 40 or older. Younger readers prefer Smartphone’s, so [...]

By: Electronic Books Seminar (Understanding and Looking Into the Future of Publishing) July 22, 2010 $ « The Literary World of Sylvia Hubbard

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 15:17:51 +0000

[...] LibraryJournal.com: a Publisher’s Lunch study indicates that the Kindle Reader demographic skews upwards, with 70% of users 40 or older. Younger readers prefer Smartphone’s, so [...]

By: Giornali in Usa: il 2009, un anno di gravi ferite ma anche dell’ avvio della riscossa | LSDI

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 14:06:18 +0000

[...] Kindle, anche se ampiamente adottato da diversi giornali, non ha risposto pienamente alle aspettative. Gli editori ricavano circa il 30% di quello che paga l’ abbonato, e in più gli e-readers sono ancora troppo costosi per molte persone e ben lontani dall’ essere un prodotto ‘’must’’. Tra l’ altro gli utenti di Kindle sono generalmente di una certa età. [...]

By: Marco Gustafsson

Marco Gustafsson — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:13:02 +0000

Agree with Maggie about reading on iPhone. It is hard to understand people who prefer it to Kindle for the purpose of reading.
Kindle is still a niche product, but only until Amazon able to reduce price on it and available titles, plus develop a used eBook marketplace.

By: maggie leung

maggie leung — Thu, 14 May 2009 18:25:45 +0000

The New York Times is suddenly getting my subscription dollars through Kindle. I freeloaded for years because I prefer online to paper. Now that Kindle lets me easily take an online NYT on the road, I’m paying. I’m youngish, and I hope the NYT is around for decades, to take my money.

I recently bought an iPhone. I synched my Kindle to read on both, but I can’t imagine wanting to spend hours reading on my small iPhone screen, especially because the battery drains like crazy. And I have to pay a monthly fee for my iPhone, unlike with my Kindle’s free Whispernet.

Going by everything I’ve read about the Kindle — and there’s been plenty of coverage — it’s already a success.

By: Results of Kindle User Demographic Survey | Ghosts of Horatio Alger

Results of Kindle User Demographic Survey | Ghosts of Horatio Alger — Thu, 07 May 2009 14:04:09 +0000

[...] survey found that 66% of respondents identified as female. As has been discussed a number of places, I too found that Kindle users skew older, with 69% over the age of [...]

By: The Kindle DX won’t save the news industry, but that’s not the point: a guide to our coverage of e-readers » Nieman Journalism Lab

Wed, 06 May 2009 16:10:56 +0000

[...] the Kindle will fail,” prompted some great discussion in the comments. More recently, he observed that the age demographics of Kindle owners is pretty similar to print newspapers. In presentations, [...]

By: Andrys

Andrys — Sun, 03 May 2009 05:26:38 +0000

This article about a very self-selected forum audience answering a ‘forum poll’ purporting to be of ‘all’ types of Kindle owners indicated only that the older Kindle audience has time and the inclination to sit on forums and discuss the Kindle itself :-)

Yes, at the normal $30/month web-data access for cell phones (and that is a minimum charge), the yearly cost for 24/7 access to the web alone is at least $360. The Kindle 2 does access most of the global web and one can choose between Basic web, Advanced, and Advanced with Javascript On. And that’s at no cost.

– Andrys

By: Zack S

Zack S — Fri, 01 May 2009 18:28:24 +0000

Abhi – I think your assessment of the young is right on. In my survey I gave respondents the option of selecting the ways in which they use the Kindle – pleasure, professional/work, educational/school – they could select all that applied.

98% indicated pleasure
22% indicated work
19% indicated school

It seems the market for non-leisurely reading either isn’t developed or the Kindle is not conducive for this act. As a grad student I am inclined to lean towards the former … as in my personal experience it was much harder to do the research for this study on the Kindle than with a computer or on traditional ink-on-paper.

By: Thad McIlroy - Future Of Publishing

Thad McIlroy - Future Of Publishing — Fri, 01 May 2009 06:12:03 +0000

[...] very interesting blog entry on 4-29 from Joshua Benton, director of the Nieman Journalism Lab; the title: “Kindle users [...]

By: Barbara Clements

Barbara Clements — Fri, 01 May 2009 02:55:31 +0000

Most of the people using the Kindle aren’t disabled. Infact I think there are only two. One is a man and I have severe, spastic Cerebral Palsy and use a headwand. True, I’m 60, but big deal. I enjoy reading.

By: MichaelJ

MichaelJ — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 23:36:55 +0000

For a retired baby boomer the price is worth the convenience and ease of use. Plus no wireless charges. Push the button get the book. Read the book. Get another book. Single purpose reading machine for a market that is willing to pay the bucks.

Me, I don’t have the money for an iPhone. Just means it’s not worth for me. But then it wasn’t designed for me.

By: Travis Mason-Bushman

Travis Mason-Bushman — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 18:29:08 +0000

The real problem is that the Kindle hardware and books are just too expensive right now. $359 plus $10-20 per book? When I can go to a good used bookstore and pick up a physical hard-copy book for $5-10?

That price hit is why the Kindle is still in the early-adopter stages. They need to get the price down, and that means particularly the e-ink screen. $359 will buy a netbook these days – not surprising that a single-purpose book-reading gadget at that price point has yet to achieve wide penetration.

By: abhi

abhi — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 17:44:36 +0000

There are actually 2 main reasons why kindle ownership skews towards an older demographic –

1) most young people don’t read much.
2) most of the reading that younger people do is mostly for school and college and there isn’t a Kindle for that demographic yet.

while it’s true that kindle is great for people with fading vision that’s hardly the big factor here.
Publishers Lunch have not done their homework -Perhaps 10% of owners buy it for vision reasons or health reasons.

Any self-respecting journalist or publisher should not have written something as stupid as -
“A variety of other impairments, from weakening eyes and carpal-tunnel-like syndromes to more exotic disabilities dominate the purchase rationales of these posters”

Especially Based on something as random as ‘a portion’ of the responses on a forum thread.

Kindles do encourage reading and if kids start using them for school they’ll start reading more which should do them much more good than playing video games on their nintendo ds or watching youtube and playing iphone games.

By: Rudolph

Rudolph — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 03:09:49 +0000

“We’re grateful and excited that Kindle sales have exceeded our most optimistic expectations.”

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos reporting a 24 percent increase in first-quarter earnings in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Sounds like a market to me, Josh.

By: Jay Liew

Jay Liew — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:53:49 +0000

Interesting find indeed! I’m one of the “young” people, here are my thoughts, FWIW:

* I already get excellent free news from free sources on the web , easily accessible with a good mobile browser (like on the iPhone); thus I have very little incentive to pay for news. Can’t think of a use-case where I would actually pull out my credit card and “bite the bullet”. If it’s something so niche and so important to me that I would actually pay money for the news, then it’s something that I would pay for, irrespective of device I consume it on: I’d pay for it if it’s web access, or through an iPhone app, Kindle ..

* Does this report imply young people don’t bother much with the Kindle? For me anyway, I like the Kindle because it’s portable; imagine having to load up 10 books to take on a trip, vs. carrying a smaller device. I suppose you could do this with an iPhone app, sans some of the hardware features in Kindle. For a college student (I am not one), I would *kill* for the free no-monthly-charge Wikipedia access alone, provided by Kindle.

By: Stephen Peters

Stephen Peters — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 21:42:56 +0000

I took a sample of almost 1,400 responses on the Amazon Kindle age thread and created a couple of charts if anyone is interested:

http://tinyurl.com/dxfvhf

By: MichaelJ

MichaelJ — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 18:31:22 +0000

“After all, the Kindle audience demographically looks an awful lot like the print newspaper audience.”

Point well taken. Boomers and near boomers who finally have the time and leisure to read. Still the biggest money spending cohort in the population. The retired population looks like they are going to live a lot longer than ever before. The age pyramid of every advanced industrial society is getting boomer fat in the over 60 category.

Sounds like a great market to this old grey beard. Just a note, it’s not arthritis. It’s the ability to carry 20 or 30 books when we go on vacation.