Let’s make the assumption (bizarre, unheard-of idea coming) that you do not write merely for the joy of it but wish to sell. That means knowing something about your market. After all, the market for bacon and alcohol is large – but not… in some places. Kabul probably doesn’t spring to mind as a great place to set up stall. The other thing, of course, is that sometimes just a niche can be very lucrative. The products above are almost certainly worth a great deal to a few customers even there. If you’re producing say e-books that only 1% of the population read… AND you reach all or most of that 1% you’re still doing exceptionally well.
So: what I am saying is that if you already have a market or can reach your niche, this post may only be of tepid interest. But it does have some pointers of how the e-book market is somewhat different to the overall population demographics.
A couple of things struck me as being very interesting: 1) the age profile of e-book users. This is not really surprising – honestly, I suspect older people are more accustomed to reading, and will try e-books simply because they’re books. I suspect that it’s not a fear of the technology that limits uptake by younger people, just that they don’t read as much as the cohort above them. We could talk all week about why, but it is the Mount Everest is. So: books that appeal to over 40’s may work better. That’s certainly contrary to the perceived wisdom in the Traditional publishing industry – where according to a friend she magically found herself going from ‘too young to appeal’, to ‘too old to appeal’ in a few months… The sweet spot was very narrow.
2) Skewing female: I would suspect that this would vary on a genre basis.
3) Income. Well, this surprised me. I assumed that e-book readers skewed poorer than that. Maybe I think I’m representative! It’s a relatively cheap source of entertainment. Maybe higher prices are bearable. It does suggest that in an economic downturn, there is still likely to be a little money for this cheap form of entertainment, and it will be less affected.
I wouldn’t trust the stats too far, (methodology a bit iffy, data not available) but it was interesting all the same.
Mad Genius Club 
29 responses to “Making sure you know your target market.”
I wonder whether it is possible to split ebook readers by what they read too?
Trad pub vs indie. Genre …. fiction vs non-fiction …
I’m sure there’s significant variation of M vs F in genre but I wonder about publisher. And possibly other ways that the numbers can be sliced and diced
Note that the article linked to is from 2010 with the data from 2009. A lot can change in 13/14 years.
Interesting . . . I’m surprised at the older age. Now I’m going to have to search for a newer analysis and see how things have changed since that article was written. For one thing, I think it predates the Indie publishing phenom.
I don’t think I’m surprised. I grew up reading a lot (RAH and Ian Fleming for the win) and barring a few times when life got in the way, spent a lot of time reading. At 71, I haven’t been playing computer games for over 20 years (Patience variants don’t count. 🙂 ) and my bookshelves are crowded already, so keeping hundreds of books in a Kindle make a lot of sense to me.
Cost and speed of delivery are also factors. I don’t like spending over $20 for a book that just might hit the wall, but am willing to spend up to $10 for fiction. (I’ve spent $12, but that $9.99 threshold is a big barrier) I did spend $20 for each of the amateur radio license e-books, where the physical books were $30 and would take over a week to be delivered.
IIRC, Indie really got going around 2010-2011, and cranked into gear after 2013. I got in in 2010, if memory serves, and things surged not long after.
I know that twenty years ago it started to be harder for me to read my vast collection of paperback fiction. I have been replacing them with ebooks ever since.
I’m hitchhiking on your comment, since i still can’t comment on the front panel. Thank you wordpress. Anyway, Dave you might assume because younger people DON’T read, but you’d be wrong.
Almost every younger person I know who is a voracious reader reads in paper and prefers paper. I DON’T KNOW WHY.
People our age who read a lot prefer kindle for various reasons: KU, and the fact it’s easier on my eyes is my reason. the ability to take my library with me in my pocket is another. And… counts — fourteen moves in 38 years. I keep my non fic neighborhood, but ALL the fiction is on kindle now.
wait, I thought of a reason for younger people to prefer it, though this only applies to those with kids, which most of them are not: The ability to share it with kids, later, when they’re older.
Could they maybe be lending their paper books to friends?
For some, maybe? Some just seem to like the paper format better.
Textbooks are e-books. Younger readers are starting to associate e-books with work, and paper with fun. And they can share paper books, show each other passages, and so on. At least that’s what I’m seeing.
Oh. That makes sense.
You can’t tab away from a book, so it’s better for focus. It’s also a break from all the screens. If you’re spending a lot of time on a laptop or a phone, getting into a different headspace to read is a plus.
I use e-ink tablets, which while you can tab away from, are not a “screen” that my brain interprets as such. I was over 40 when we got a phone I could read, and my eyes were not up to it.
Yeah, e-ink meets the criteria. There must be something else going on to explain the preference.
Personally, I like being able to flip back and forth through a book, gauging my progress at a glance, and physically owning the books I’ve read. But I don’t see how that correlates with age.
Print is adjustable on ebooks. Not on print. Even glassed don’t help enough
You can do all that with e-ink tabs.
I wonder if it’s prestige? Because it’s more expensive.
Um, is there a referenced market analysis article I can’t find identified here, or are we speaking in general?
Pending that response, I get a lot of newsletter multi-author ads for books. The vast bulk that have targeted me are either current literary darlings or way woke (and clearly targeted at people decades younger (hideously wish-fulfillment one-sided Romance in multiple sub-genres). I can’t possibly be whom they mean to aim for.
I can’t see it, either.
The words ‘this post’ in the second paragraph, first sentence are a link.
Statistics can be so unreliable as to be worse than useless because how do you know if good data was ever collected? On everyone who reads?
I thought younger son (24) didn’t read but he does.
His reading doesn’t get counted because he reads on Royal Road on his phone.
As far as I can tell, Royal Road (among other things) publishes a lot of “Boys’ Own Adventures”, a genre currently ignored by Trad Pub.
Younger son even — and he reports other readers on Royal Road do this — throws $$ via Patreon to his preferred writers.
But their reading habits are not counted at all.
Nor is that money.
The question arises, how big is the market you’re addressing?
I have a tidbit to offer. My latest publication is “Alice Haddison’s Busy Day”, by Edward Thomas (aka me, The Phantom.) Short story, 25 pages, 16+ age group, meaning everybody but little kids. I got it on Sarah’s promo last week, on the theory that Sarah swings a pretty big bat.
Also she said to write it, so I’m blaming/crediting her. It’s your fault, Sarah. ~:D
So yesterday I open my Amazon doohickey and discover that my story is “Number 1 in New Releases in 45-Minute Teen & Young Adult Short Reads!”
Also it has one rather nice 4* review by one of those semi-professional Amazon reviewer types.
I’m Number One? Dang! Go me!
But what does that look like, really? Well, I’ll tell you, even though no one ever seems to spill these secrets. This one time, I will.
10 sales, 409 pages read in KENP. $6.86 Canadian on the Benjamin Scale. That’s what “Number 1 in New Releases in 45-Minute Teen & Young Adult Short Reads!” looks like.
But, on the other hand I have had a couple of new sales on my first book, which is nice, and the new novella is… limping along with similar results.
What does this mean? One thing it clearly means is that “New Releases in 45-Minute Teen & Young Adult Short Reads” is a very small tidal pool. 10 copies + 409 pages is ~25 downloads all up, assuming the KENP people finished it. 25 downloads gets you to number one? Wow.
So, one might be tempted to whinge a bit given the Real World results. On the other hand its a short story I completed and polished in a morning, so I didn’t work that hard.
I must say that it was very nice to get that little flag saying I was #1 last night. A definite boost to morale, even though the actual numbers are so low as to be silly.
Just checked the page, as of ~1:20 PM today I am #2 behind “Life After Gallbladder Removal: My Experience of Cholecystectomy.” Alas, fame, so fleeting. 😦
I see Wordpest and Amazon colluded to link that huge picture again. 😡 Stupid links. Good thing its broken.
Here is the link again, hopefully crippled.
amazon.com/gp/new-releases/digital-text/8624175011/ref=zg_b_hnr_8624175011_1
add https://www. in the front to get the page.
Congrats!
Please, please tell me that you did a screen shot so you can remember that moment when you were number 1. I was number one in new releases in Medieval Poetry last November for sales of 8 books. After that for another month I would pop back to number 1 for a single sale. It was quite entertaining and quite fleeting. Jane
I did indeed take a picture. ~:D Great minds think alike.
Still, quite a thing to be knocked out of #1 by “Life After Gallbladder Removal”.
Roflmao
I don’t know how trustworthy this site is but they do have some newer (2021) data and links to sources: https://goodereader.com/blog/digital-publishing/is-digital-publishing-overlooking-their-biggest-consumer
Part of the problem with that is (Okay, haven’t read the questions being asked) but a question like “have you read an ebook in the last year” is going to completely fail to identify the people who read multiple books a week, and who are probably supplying half of my income though KULL.
It’s those heavy readers we writers really want to know all about.