The Bookseller's Digital Census, which is an "annual tracker of how the book business is managing the digital shift" in the U.K., shared 10 key findings from its latest report:
- For the first time, the percentage of respondents who commonly read on an iPad (41.9%) outstrips those who do so on a Kindle (37.9%).
- 71% buy e-books regularly from Amazon--more than five times as many as do so frequently from the next most popular e-retailer, Apple's iBookstore (13.4%).
- 15.6% say they could envisage a day when there will be no physical bookshops.
- 50% of publishers say digital formats now account for more than 10% of their total sales, but nearly a quarter (23.6%) say they account for 3% or less. Less than a third (30.7%) of respondents think digital will generate more than 50% of their sales (in value terms) by the end of 2020--substantially down from nearly half (48.2%) in the 2012 Census.
- 66.8% think the U.K. will sell more books in digital formats than in print by 2025.
- 28.8% say they now sell subscriptions. Half (50.7%) think it will become a viable model in the future.
- 76.5% of publishers now think territorial rights are coming under increasing pressure as the e-book market develops globally.
- On a scale of 1 to 10--with 1 very unsatisfied and 10 very satisfied--traditionally published authors rated their publishers at a lukewarm average of 5.7. But self-published authors' levels of satisfaction with what they have achieved to date is, on average, a rosier 7.1.
- 48.1% of self-published authors say they have sold fewer than 1,000 e-books. Another quarter (25.9%) have sold between 1,000 and 5,000.
- 14.7% think the sector as a whole is prepared for the next stage in the digital revolution.
The survey was completed by more than 1,000 respondents. The full 25-page Digital Census was made available to all Futurebook delegates on Friday.