At Frankfurt Book Fair: Phoning up a book

Image provided by Frankfurt Book Fair 2014 | Photo Marc Jacquemin

At Frankfurt Book Fair, debate about how to position reading and publishing in the mobile space was a frequent topic of interest.

Michael Cairns and Publishing Technology unveiled a new study based on the survey responses of some 3,000 consumers in the United States and United Kingdom.

“An increasing number of people are now using their mobile phones to read ebooks,” the Publishing Technology material tells us.

The survey results indicate that 43 percent of respondents said they have read an ebook, or part of an ebook, on their handsets. What’s more, 66 percent of mobile-phone book-readers (59 percent in the UK and 72 percent in the US) are reported by Publishing Technology to have said they currently read more on their phones than they did last year.

But the other shoe falls pretty quickly here. From Cairns’ statement about the survey:

Despite the mobile phone’s overall growth in appeal and popularity as a reading device, the survey discovered that readers, particularly those in the UK, tend to read on their handsets fairly infrequently and in much shorter bursts, compared to the amount of time they would spend reading printed books or ebooks on tablets and e-readers.

Infographic provided by Publishing Technology

A few points to break some of that down, from Publishing Technology (which has also supplied this infographic).

Just 26 percent of British mobile phone book readers use their devices to read more than once a week.
Some 53 percent of their American counterparts say they use their devices to read more than once weekly.
Two-thirds of respondents on the UK side (65 percent) told the survey they like to spend less than 30 minutes reading on their mobile phones at each sitting.
Half the Americans responding said they’re comfortable spending more than 30 minutes on each mobile phone reading session.

By the way, if you’ve doubted that romance may not be the dominant choice of readers everywhere, this survey did some asking in the UK, and its respondents answered that when it comes to mobile reading, their favorite genres are:

The crime/thriller category (27 percent),
Autobiographies/biographies (25 percent),
General fiction (20 percent),
Science-fiction and fantasy (19 percent), and
Romance/erotic fiction (18 percent).

In terms of which companies have the most phones using their mobile-reading platforms, the study found that “Amazon and Apple have 81 percent of the market share between them, with Amazon’s Kindle ahead on 50 percent and Apple’s iBooks on 31 percent.

“Kobo and Nook lie in third and fourth places with nine percent and six percent respectively.” iBooks, the Publishing Technology report tells us, “is closing ground on Kindle among the younger generations.”

The study found that 41 percent of 18-24 year olds are using Kindle versus 39 percent who are now using iBooks.

“General lack of convenience”

While it seems as if we hear people talk about reading on their smartphones as being convenience, the Publishing Technology survey’s respondents said a “general lack of convenience” was their No. 1 reason not to read on that mobile device.

In fact, those respondents who said they were “opposed to reading full-length books on their phones,” the main turnoffs were:

General lack of convenience (40 percent),
Mobile phone overuse (31 per cent),
Unpleasant overall reading experience (33 per cent), and
Ease of use and accessibility shortcomings with platforms (24 percent).

“Additionally,” says the statement from Publishing Technology, “people who don’t read on their mobiles cited a number of catalysts that could potentially encourage them to read on their phones more readily: